Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — TRADE AND INDUSTRY

Natural Gas (Leakage)

Mr. Palmer: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and industry if, in view of the increasing expense and inconvenience imposed on other public utilities in taking counter safety measures and the loss of life already brought about in electricity supply by the leakage of natural gas, he will have immediate conversations with the Gas Corporation on the situation, with a view to the exercise of his powers to give a general direction to the industry.

The Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Peter Emery): No, Sir. The corporation has already taken steps to reduce leakages, to improve liaison with other public utilities and to attend promptly to reported leaks.

Mr. Palmer: Does not the hon. Gentleman realise that his Department has a direct responsibility for safety in these matters and that, although the Opposition rightly suggested during the passage of the Gas Bill a short time ago that an absolute liability should be placed upon the British Gas Corporation, there has now been loss of life, in spite of that warning? How much longer will the corporation continue pumping dry gas into a network designed in some cases 100 years ago for wet gas?

Mr. Emery: I have said several times that my Department realises that we have a great responsibility here. We still believe that absolute liability would not be the answer, because a number of accidents may arise which have nothing to

do with the British Gas Corporation. Moreover, I know from investigations I have made that the corporation is very much up to date in trying to ensure that its main line and feeder line service is as modernised as possible.

Mr. Varley: The hon. Gentleman will recall that, during the passage of the Bill, he said he would keep this matter under review. In view of the alarming circumstances referred to by my hon. Friend, will he now consider setting up a separate study, independent of the British Gas Corporation, so that we may know the full facts of the situation?

Mr. Emery: As the hon. Gentleman knows, there has already been an inquiry on the matter of gas coming from the North Sea. If the hon. Member for Bristol, Central (Mr. Palmer) has specific new facts which he wishes to put to me, I shall be glad to have them, but I must say that the situation is not helped by accusations that North Sea gas is odourless when pumped out. This is quite untrue, since a special additive is put in so that it may be sensed by everybody dealing with it.

Building Societies

Mr. Walter Johnson: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if, in view of the fact that the building societies have not reduced mortgage interest rates at a time when record sums have been invested, he will now refer the building societies to the Monopolies Commission.

The Minister for Trade and Consumer Affairs (Sir Geoffrey Howe): Mortgage interest rates are at present under discussion between the Departments concerned and representatives of the building societies. A reference to the Monopolies Commission would not be justified at present.

Mr. Johnson: Does not the Minister realise that the greedy and irresponsible attitude of the building societies has shaken public confidence in them, and that there should be an inquiry? Is he aware that the astronomical increase in house prices which we had in 1971 and 1972 was largely due to what the building societies did in indiscriminately making loans for mortgages on property which was not worth it?

Sir G. Howe: I do not accept the general and wide-ranging nature of the hon. Gentleman's allegations. The rate for investment which the Building Societies Association last recommended was that which it judged necessary to attract sufficient sums to finance home ownership. As I have said, the matter is under discussion by my right hon. Friends with the Building Societies Association.

Mr. S. James A. Hill: Is not my right hon. and learned Friend aware that young married couples find extreme difficulty in obtaining mortgages? Could not the Government look into the possibility of second mortgage schemes for newly married couples?

Sir G. Howe: The Government are certainly concerned to see an expansion of home ownership by young married couples. I shall draw my hon. Friend's suggestion to my right hon. Friend's attention.

Mr. Millan: Is the building society rate to go up to 10 per cent.? If it is, does not that show the completely artificial and wasteful nature of the so-called subsidy over the last three months?

Sir G. Howe: It would be quite wrong for anyone to assume the premise of the hon. Gentleman's question. As I have said, the matter is under discussion by my right hon. Friends and the Building Societies Association.

Mr. Ridley: Is it not a fact that the building societies are not a monopoly and neither' are they profit-making, so quite what the hon. Gentleman wants to investigate one does not know; but does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that it would be better if the Government left the building societies alone to balance out their receipts and their payments as they think fit?

Sir G. Howe: There are obvious reasons why the matter I have mentioned should be discussed by the Government with the Building Societies Association. The other matters to which my hon. Friend refers are among those which I have borne in mind.

Duty-free Shops

Mr. Cronin: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will seek powers to enable him to control the

prices charged in duty-free shops at airports and on ships.

Mr. Emery: No, Sir.

Mr. Cronin: Are not very large profits being made by these organisations—for example, 140 per cent. being considered a normal profit on a bottle of Scotch whisky at duty-free shops? Is it not time that the travelling public were excluded from this scandalous profiteering?

Mr. Emery: The Monopolies Commission's report on the supply of these goods in cross-Channel ferries is awaited. I should want further evidence beyond that produced by the hon. Gentleman about the level of profiteering, and if he has any facts I shall be only too pleased to receive them.

Mrs. Knight: Is my hon. Friend aware that some duty-free shops, notably one at Hamburg airport, tell travellers that they are permitted to bring in more duty-free goods than the entitlement actually allows and that many people, believing what the shops say, enter the country with goods on which they subsequently have to pay duty?

Mr. Emery: I thank my hon. Friend for the question but she will realise that I have no control over what happens in Hamburg. Perhaps the Press will draw this practice to the attention of travellers.

Mr. Mason: Is the Minister aware that the EEC Commission is programming to abolish duty-free goods and the duty-free shops at airports and on ships? What is the Government's attitude towards that?

Mr. Emery: That is an entirely different question.

Consumer Protection

Mrs. Sally Oppenheim: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what plans he has to introduce measures to comply with the Consumer Protection Charter adopted by the Council of Europe on 28th May 1973.

Sir G. Howe: The Government are in general accord with the spirit of this charter, which is being considered by the Committee of Ministers of the Council. In many respects the principles of the charter are already embodied in United Kingdom legislation.

Mrs. Oppenheim: Will my right hon. and learned Friend pay special attention to that article of the charter which refers to the minimum standards of safety in consumer products? In view of the startling rise in the number of children who have been treated in hospital in England and Wales for injuries from ordinary household products, will he consider bringing forward labelling regulations? I have been requesting this for some time. Will he say how much longer the talks on the EEC draft directive are likely to continue?

Sir G. Howe: I had anticipated that this would have been the provision with which my hon. Friend was particularly concerned, because I know of her close and persistent interest in the subject. She appreciates, of course, that this is the subject of the EEC directive, and the implications of that and the way in which it can be fitted into the United Kingdom scene are being studied not merely by the Government but by consumer and trade organisations too.

Mr. Heffer: Will the Minister urge that detailed information such as antecedent characteristics should be provided to the consumer under Article B(6) of the charter? This means, or should mean, that the origin of a product such as the shoes now produced for Dunlop in Taiwan, Spain and Pakistan—where cheap labour is used—should be taken into consideration. Is not the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that this sort of thing is causing redundancy among the Dunlop workers in this country? While waiting for the charter, is he prepared to take steps to deal with the situation now?

Sir G. Howe: The point about origin marking of goods is outside the scope of the charter, which is concerned with information which is of guidance to the consumer for the consumption of the product. There are already many regulations dealing with this matter.

Mr. Heffer: Read the charter.

Sir G. Howe: I have read the charter. I have it here. I have taken account of the hon. Member's point, which is not covered by the original Question.

Mr. Alan Williams: The Minister said that the Government were in general

agreement with the charter. Will he specify where they are in disagreement with it?

Sir G. Howe: There are no identifiable areas which I should like to mention. The Government agree with the spirit of the charter, but it covers a wide range of detailed matters which must be looked at on their merits.

Mr. Greville Janner: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry whether he will institute a publicity campaign to advise buyers of their rights under the sale of goods legislation and of the fact that certain so-called guarantees and warranties in consumer contracts made on or after, but not before, 18th May 1973 are void.

Sir G. Howe: Frequent references to these matters have been made in all the media of publicity and a pamphlet has recently been published on the rights given to consumers by the Supply of Goods (Implied Terms) Act 1973. We have sought to make it clear that exclusion clauses in consumer contracts of sales of goods or in misleading "warranties" or "guarantees" are void.

Mr. Janner: Is the Minister aware that most people do not read his pamphlets and have no idea whether or not a clause is void. Is he also aware that the majority of manufacturers of radios, televisions, electrical goods and other products have not changed their guarantees or warranties? Will he make it illegal to foist these misleading and void documents upon the unsuspecting public?

Sir G. Howe: I am aware that we must use every possible means of making such matters known and understood. I have taken part in a number of broadcasts about the legislation, as has the hon. and learned Gentleman on at least one occasion. I am prepared to use every method, including this Question Time, to acquaint people with the effects of the legislation. My Department is in consultation with a number of trade associations, which are successfully advising their members to change their documents to eliminate misleading exclusion clauses. I have also made it clear in speeches on a number of occasions that, if exclusion clauses that are made void by the statute continue to be included, it will be a matter for the


Director General of Fair Trading to consider at an early stage whether additional provision should be made to ban the use of such exclusion clauses.

Mrs. Sally Oppenheim: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the excellent exposition which appeared in Which? magazine telling consumers of their new rights under the Supply of Goods (Implied Terms) Act should be blown up to poster size and exhibited in citizens' advice bureaux and town halls pending the enactment of the Fair Trading Bill, when the Director General himself will be able to publicise such things?

Sir G. Howe: I shall certainly consider my hon. Friend's suggestion. Copies of the pamphlet produced to explain the Act have already been supplied to citizens' advice bureaux.

Mr. Raphael Tuck: Has the Minister considered the advisability of making illegal the insertion of exclusion clauses, under heavy penalties?

Sir G. Howe: I have already considered that, as did the Law Commission when it prepared its report. It concluded that to make them illegal in general terms would not be acceptable, because some contracts deal with business contracts and consumer contracts in the same form. For that reason, it did not recommend what the hon. Gentleman suggests. But, as I have already made clear, it will be for the Director General of Fair Trading to consider proposing regulations to outlaw and prohibit the use of invalid exclusion clauses if traders and manufacturers do not respond to the provisions of the present legislation.

Mr. Alan Williams: Is not the Minister aware that too many manufacturers are still issuing "phoney" guarantees in the hope that they can mislead the public into thinking that their rights are less than they are? Does he accept that the best publicity would be a series of test cases? The Press could ensure that adequate publicity was given to them. How soon does the right hon. and learned Gentleman hope to introduce parallel legislation to extend protection from exclusion clauses to the service sector?

Sir G. Howe: I am not in control of whether and when test cases can be brought on the matter. I have made

clear—and I am grateful to hon. Members for giving me a further opportunity to make clear this afternoon—that it will be for the Director General to consider whether the continued inclusion of such clauses should be proscribed by regulations under the Fair Trading Bill. Comparable provisions in respect of the supply of services are being considered by the Law Commission, and I know how urgently the House wants that matter to be completed. I have said that its recommendations are not likely to be available before the end of the year. I have also said that when they are available the Government will give them the most urgent consideration.

North Staffordshire (Area Status)

Mr. Ashley: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will now grant intermediate status to North Staffordshire.

The Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Anthony Grant): I am not convinced of the need for this. Unemployment is below the national average and falling.

Mr. Ashley: A powerful case can be made for granting intermediate status to North Staffordshire, not on the grounds of unemployment, which should not be the only criterion, but because of the contraction of the main industries there. In the last 10 years the pottery industry has lost 10,000 men and mining 8,500, and now a steelworks may close which will mean the loss of 2,000 jobs. Will the Minister do what he can to stop the rot and bring industrial vitality back to North Staffordshire?

Mr. Grant: Unemployment cannot be disregarded, and neither can the increase in the number of vacancies. The indications are that a substantial fall in unemployment in North Staffordshire and a great increase in vacancies—they are more or less equal at the moment—should take place. North Staffordshire is well placed to absorb the changes which are happening in its basic industries.

Mr. Benn: Will the Minister say whether the decision to grant intermediate status of the kind sought by my hon. Friend lies solely within the competence of the Government, or does it require the assent of the European Commission?

Mr. Grant: As I understand it, the Government are perfectly entitled to make their decision about boundaries.

Power Station Construction

Sir G. Nabarro: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what reduction in electric power station construction programmes there will be for the five years 1974–78, inclusive, or other convenient period, as part of the reduction in expenditure on nationalised industries, announced recently by the Chancellor of the Exchequer; what danger of power cuts will thereby be engendered and what further reduction in the demand for coal will be occasioned; and whether he will make a statement.

Mr. Emery: My hon. Friend will be pleased to know that the recently-announced reduction in capital expenditure by the nationalised industries in 1974–75 should not affect the power station construction programmes of the CEGB.

Sir G. Nabarro: As the prognosis for the next five to seven years shows that there will be a declining supply of petroleum fuels and an increased demand for coal, has my hon. Friend considered the prospect of increasing the number of coal-fired power stations, notably in the North-East and the North of England, and of reducing the number of oil-fired stations?

Mr. Emery: That is a slightly different question, but proposals on the fuelling of power stations are a matter for the Central Electricity Generating Board, which has applied for two new stations.

Mr. Skinner: Will the Minister tell us why only some nationalised industries and public authorities are told what to do by the Government? Will he explain why British Railways are told to sell massive areas of land to the property speculators, and why local authorities are told by the Government to increase rents when they do not want to do so, whereas on a relatively small matter like the burning of coal the CEGB cannot be told to use solid fuel in new power stations?

Mr. Emery: Two matters arise. The CEGB would not consider the fuelling of power stations a relatively small matter.
It believes it to be of major importance. Secondly, on the hon. Member's example about land, all Government Departments, including mine, have urged nationalised industries to release as much land as is humanly possible for the good of the country.

Mr. Skeet: The electrical manufacturing industry has to survive. As it depends upon new orders, when will my hon. Friend the Minister authorise the construction of Littlebrook and Killingholme and Drax power stations, for which it is essential to give the go-ahead?

Mr. Emery: My hon. Friend is confusing one power station with two. The Littlebrook and Killingholme power stations are now before my hon. Friend the Minister for Industry and a decision will be made in order to ensure that there is no delay in ordering.

Mr. Palmer: If the economy is booming as the Government say, we shall need far more power stations in the future. Therefore, why should there be this hint that there are to be restrictions on the capital expenditure of nationalised industries, including electricity supply?

Mr. Emery: The hon. Member did not hear my original answer. There will be no reduction in capital cost terms of the CEGB's future generating capacity.

Mr. Varley: Is the Minister aware that the Government's delay in announcing the review of power station policy is leaving the field wide open to the ridiculous propaganda of Mr. Arthur Hawkins of the CEGB? Why does he not put an end to this by giving the go-ahead for Drax B and West Burton to be coal-fired? If the Government do not have the powers for this, why do they not take them?

Mr. Emery: As the hon. Member knows, the fuelling of Drax B is not a question which is before the Minister. We are considering Killingholme and Little-brook and a decision there will be made in sufficient time to ensure that there is no delay in ordering.

Concorde

Mr. Hunt: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry whether he will make a statement on the present position regarding the establishment of a Concorde simulator in Great Britain.

The Minister for Aerospace and Shipping (Mr. Michael Heseltine): The most appropriate arrangements for simulator training facilities are being carefully examined, and I hope that the position will be resolved shortly.

Mr. Hunt: As the only alternative to a simulator is the training of crews on actual aircraft, which would be much more expensive, and as the French simulator industry lacks both experience and expertise, can my hon. Friend give an assurance that he will continue to fight for the simulator to be sited in the United Kingdom and that he will continue to give his unstinted support to the joint project put forward by the two British firms which are pre-eminent in the field?

Mr. Heseltine: I am aware of the joint project which has been put forward by Redifon and Link-Miles, and I am certainly aware of the geographical attraction of siting a simulator in this country. I assure my hon. Friend that both these matters will be carefully taken into account when we reach our decision.

Mr. Millan: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that on 7th August last year, in a parliamentary answer, I was given a specific assurance by the Under-Secretary that the simulator would be situated in Britain? What has changed since then, and why has that decision apparently now been brought into question?

Mr. Heseltine: The hon. Gentleman is correct. He was given exactly that assurance. We obviously have to bear in mind the rate of sales and the facilities and capacity of the simulator, and we are examining the situation in the light of a new proposal which has been put forward since that date.

Mr. Tebbit: Will my hon. Friend bear in mind that it is not simply a matter of the geographical attraction of where the simulator is finally sited but the technical attraction for whichever country's industry, in this extremely important field, is to build it? Will he please put some push into pushing forward our contenders?

Mr. Heseltine: We have kept closely in touch with the manufacturers on the

matter. I am very much aware of the point made by my hon. Friend.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry when he next intends to discuss the progress of Concorde with the French Ministers concerned.

Mr. Michael Heseltine: I expect my next meeting with the French Minister of Transport about Concorde to be in the autumn.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: Are the French Government pressing for an immediate production slow-down? Can my hon. Friend assure the House that he is aware of the difficulty which we would face in selling to British taxpayers the proposition that they should pay for a single production line in France?

Mr. Heseltine: There is no pressure from the French Government on any of the matters which my hon. Friend raises. We shall discuss in the autumn any matter relevant to the Concorde programme.

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: If the hon. Gentleman is to maintain two production lines—one in this country and one in France—as there are no firm orders, with the exception of the French order, what will he do with the aircraft? Even BOAC says that it will not take the aircraft with its present noise levels. What is the use of producing aircraft if they cannot be sold?

Mr. Heseltine: The hon. Gentleman is aware that BOAC has said no such thing, and it is for the Governments concerned— [Interruption.] It is important that we should clear up this matter. BOAC has said nothing of the sort. The rumour in the Press that it had was promptly denied by BOAC the next day.

Mr. Skinner: Is BOAC buying it?

Mr. Heseltine: It is buying it. It is very important that we should maintain a balance between the rate of production and the orders we have for the aircraft at any given time.

Mr. Bishop: Will the Minister confirm that the United States FAA administrator recently said that he expects the United States to confirm the certificate of airworthiness at the same time as the British


and French? I believe that we are 85 per cent. towards that goal and that the United States has no intention of bringing forward discriminatory legislation against supersonic aircraft and Concorde. When the Minister meets his counterpart in France, will he discuss future development of Concorde and British participation in that development?

Mr. Heseltine: Certainly the last statement which I saw from the FAA in America was extremely helpful to the general prospects of Concorde. In any conversations we have with the French Government, which are likely to take place in the autumn, the question of British participation will be fully to the fore.

Sale of Goods (Standardised Quantities)

Miss Fookes: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will now take steps to ensure that all pre-packed foods and other goods are sold in prescribed standardised quantities.

Mr. Emery: My right hon. and learned Friend told the hon. Member for Don Valley (Mr. Kelley) on 13th February that the Government add to the list of prepacked foods sold in prescribed quantities whenever we are satisfied that it is desirable to do so.—[Vol. 850, c. 329–30.]

Miss Fookes: Does not my hon. Friend recognise that sale in prescribed standardised quantities is desirable for all such goods, and that we should like to see a little quicker action than we have seen hitherto?

Mr. Emery: We discussed the matter in somewhat greater detail when considering the Weights and Measures (Unit Pricing) Bill only last week, when I think my hon. Friend agreed that certain goods lend themselves to standard packaging and others perhaps to unit pricing. Before we go ahead with standard packaging there needs to be the most extensive consultation with the manufacturers to ensure that cans and packages can be introduced in the manner and with the presentation that my hon. Friend would want. That is continuing.

Mr. Molloy: Is the Minister aware that there must now be abundant evi-

dence of the need for new legislation? Will he also consider, in relation both to this Question and to the points raised in Question No. 10, having conversations with the Secretary of State for the Environment to see how local authorities can help, and how they can be assisted in appointing consumer protection officers and setting up consumer protection offices?

Mr. Emery: I do not accept that there is any need for new legislation. The Government are carrying out extensive consultations for consumer protection advice centres to be much more widely spread throughout the country. I hope that that will be welcomed by the Opposition.

Mr. Alan Williams: I am sure the Minister realises that the public are as concerned about the safety of prepacked foods as they are about quantity. Will he, as a matter of urgency, investigate with the Minister of Agriculture the report by the Halesowen Public Health Department and the report "Monitoring of Foodstuff for Heavy Metals", which allege that the lead content of certain canned fruits is five times as high as the statutory limit, and the even more disturbing allegation that certain canned baby foods have an abnormally high lead content?

Mr. Emery: The safety of foods is the responsibility of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture. I am certain that both he and my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment are only too concerned to ensure that any suggestions that the lead content is dangerous are kept under the closest review, so that such danger is not allowed to occur.

Shoe Manufacturers (Closure)

Mrs. Renée Short: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many British shoe manufacturers have closed down each year since 1970; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Anthony Grant: I regret that the information is not available because no separate records are kept of closures in the footwear industry. There has been some rationalisation and changes of ownership. Production in the footwear industry is currently running at a high level.

Mrs. Short: Is the Minister aware that I have a list of 15 firms which went out of business last year involving approximately 3,000 redundancies? That is a matter of very great concern, especially as many of the smaller firms which have been made over or which have gone bankrupt catered for the rather unusual sizes which are required and which the shoe chains do not bother with. Clearly this is a matter for the consumer as well.
Is the Minister aware that, due to competition from Common Market countries, the British shoe trade is certainly facing a great deal of difficulty? Is he aware that the French shoe manufacturers, for example, are shortly opening a London office which will make further onslaughts on the British shoe trade? What will he do about it?

Mr. Grant: As regards the rundown in the industry, it is true that employment in the industry has been diminishing since 1966—a substanial amount was lost during the period of the previous administration—but this has mostly been due to rationalisation. [Interruption.] Most of the people who have been made redundant have found alternative employment or it has been a case of natural wastage. Production in the shoe industry so far this year is running well ahead of the level of 1970 and import growth has eased considerably. In our discussions with the industry it was made clear to us that the industry welcomed our entry into Europe, which has been a great advantage to it.

Mrs. Short: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Did I mishear the Minister? Did he say that he had no figures and could not give them? It seems that he is comparing the present situation with what happened when the previous administration were in office? Has he the figures or has he not?

Mr. Speaker: That is not a point of order.

Dr. Stuttaford: Is my hon. Friend aware that there is another danger facing the shoe industry? In my constituency there may be short-time working if nothing is done about shortage of PVC. Is my hon. Friend aware that that shortage is being exploited and exacerbated by the manufacturers who are gambling on yet another commodity market?

Mr. Grant: I accept what my hon. Friend says. There are certain difficulties about shortages in that respect which affect the whole of industry and not only the footwear industry. That is a separate matter which the Government are considering carefully.

Mr. Greville hauler: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that in cities such as Leicester, which depend greatly on the shoe industry, the words "rationalisation" and "natural wastage" mean nothing to the people who are thrown out of work through closures? What is he prepared to do to make more and not fewer jobs in these industries?

Mr. Grant: I should have thought that the evidence shows quite clearly that in Leicester there has been a substantial fall in the unemployment figures. In fact, the figures are well below the national average. Further, there has been a great increase in the number of vacancies in Leicester.

Industrial Dispersal (London and Middlesex)

Mr. Molloy: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what steps are being undertaken to deal with the problem of industry leaving the West Middlesex and London area; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Anthony Grant: Where manufacturing capacity has closed, alternative employment is readily available and the rate of unemployment is one of the lowest in the country.

Mr. Molloy: The hon. Gentleman must know that that is not a particularly satisfactory answer. He must be aware that literally thousands of skilled craftsmen who cannot be employed in the skills they have learnt are now employed in unskilled labour. That is why the unemployment figures are kept down. Before long the West Middlesex area, with the advent of more and more warehouses, will be a depository for depositories. Will the hon. Gentleman take a little peep into the future and try to stop this appalling drift?

Mr. Grant: It is unrealistic to try to present the West Middlesex area as being in some way depressed. The fact is that London is still the largest manufacturing


area in Britain. In West Middlesex alone, the number of notified vacancies is 10,600 and in the Middlesex County Times last week there were 14½ pages of advertisements for vacancies.

Mr. Jessel: Is my hon. Friend aware that in the part of West Middlesex which I have the honour to represent there is a serious shortage of labour? The position is that essential services such as buses have to be curtailed. Will he take no notice of the foolish policies of the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Molloy), which if carried out would very much worsen the housing shortage in the area?

Mr. Grant: I take note of what my hon. Friend says and I am sure that the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Molloy) will do so as well.

Mr. Molloy: I shall debate the matter publicly with the hon. Member for Twickenham (Mr. Jessel) at any time.

Mr. Bidwell: Surely the hon. Gentleman must know better than that. Does he know that the substance of the disquiet is the misuse of skilled labour? Is he aware that many of the workers concerned came to the area during times of depression in the North and in South Wales and that they are exceedingly apprehensive? The concern, unlike that which seems to be exhibited today, is widespread. That is evidenced by the representations being made by both Labour and Conservative members of the Greater London Council.

Mr. Grant: I can understand the anxiety of anyone who has to change his job. It is one thing to have to change one's job when there are ample employment opportunities but quite different when in other parts of the country there may not be a job at all. I should have thought that what the hon. Member for Ealing, North and the hon. Member for Southall (Mr. Bidwell) want to do is contrary to regional policies which both sides of the House wish to see pursued.

Natural Gas Conversion

Mr. John Wells: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will give a general direction to gas boards that no person employed in giving advice to consumers on changeover to natural

gas shall be in any way remunerated on a commission basis for equipment sold.

Mr. Emery: Whilst this is a matter for the British Gas Corporation, I can inform my hon. Friend that in only one of the 12 regions is this practice carried on.

Mr. Wells: Which region, and will it stop very soon?

Mr. Emery: It is the North Thames region. This is a matter for commercial consideration, and there must be the strictest discipline in trying to ensure that there is no malpractice

Mr. Wells: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of that reply, I give notice that I shall raise the matter on the Adjournment at the earliest possible opportunity.

European Economic Community

Mr. Jay: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what was the increase in total value of United Kingdom imports from the rest of the EEC, and of United Kingdom exports to the rest of the EEC, respectively, in the first five months of 1973; and what was the visible trade balance between the United Kingdom and the rest of the EEC during this period.

The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Peter Walker): Between the first five months of 1972 and 1973, 39 per cent. and 29 per cent. respectively. Figures of the visible balance for areas are prepared on an annual basis only.

Mr. Jay: Do not the figures show that our imports from the EEC are exceeding our exports to the EEC by about £80 million a month and that that sum is approximately equal to our present balance of payments deficit?

Mr. Walker: Of course, there has been an adverse balance of payments situation for some time. What is encouraging is the accelerating rate at which we are exporting to Common Market countries, which represents an increase of nearly 30 per cent. During the period concerned the British economy, in terms of output, has been expanding faster than that of all but one of the other eight. That has meant a large importation of machinery.

Advance Factory, Falkirk

Mr. Ewing: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry when he now expects to find a tenant for the advance factory at Lochlands, Falkirk.

Mr. Anthony Grant: An application is being considered.

Mr. Ewing: It is only one in a long list of applications which has been considered for this factory. The hon. Gentleman is aware from correspondence which has passed between us that there is grave apprehension on the part of Falkirk Town Council and the unemployed in Falkirk. Is he aware that it is thought that the Department of Trade and Industry is playing tricks with the factory by increasing the square foot rental of Lochlands factory and reducing the rental of other factories in Scotland so as to take the industries which might be interested in the Lochlands factory away from Loch-lands to other factories?

Mr. Grant: I assure the hon. Gentleman—I hoped that I had done so in our correspondence—that that is not true. Rents must automatically be reviewed periodically. It is the wish of my officials in Scotland and myself to work as closely as possible with the local authorities to try to ensure that the factory is occupied. I have confidence that we shall succeed in doing so.

Companies (Abandoned Merger Proposals)

Mr. Tebbit: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry under what Act he has powers in relation to proposed mergers of public companies after the proposals have been abandoned by the boards of the companies concerned.

Sir G. Howe: If a proposed merger is abandoned after reference to the Monopolies Commission for investigation, the commission is required, under Section 6(7) of the Monopolies and Mergers Act 1965, to lay the reference aside if it appears to it that the proposals have been abandoned, and if the Department consents. However, if required by the Department, the commission has to furnish such information as the Department may require as to the results until then of its investigation.

Mr. Tebbit: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree, in view of what he has said about his powers, that he should regret going as far as he did on 20th June in pursuing a post mortem on the wild goose chase which the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) raised after the proposed merger of Slater Walker and Hill Samuel? Does he agree that it is time that this House paid more attention to the matters over which it should have and has control and less attention to those matters over which it has no control, whether it be abortive mergers, psychedelic advertisements on buses or tennis players who do not play tennis?

Sir G. Howe: I am glad to think that some of the matters raised by my hon. Friend are outside my responsibility. My hon. Friend is right to remind the House that the purpose of the legislation is to ensure that significant mergers do not take place without adequate consideration of possible effects on the public interest and that it does not bear on a proposed merger which has been abandoned.

Mr. Benn: When the Slater Walker and Hill Samuel merger came to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for consideration, he extracted assurances from the parties involved which he held to be in the public interest. Is he saying that, because that wild goose became a lame duck, those requirements are no longer necessary in the public interest? If so, is that altogether a satisfactory state of affairs?

Sir G. Howe: I know that some commentators have concluded from the fact that those conditions ceased to be relevant, because the merger did not go ahead, that there was some general change in the Government's view about such matters. I can only say that the particular conditions, for example, in relation to warehousing are matters which are under consideration and that the House will have to await publication of the Government's proposals for company law reform.

Mr. Norman Lamont: Can my right hon. and learned Friend confirm or deny a report in the Evening News last week that the Government intend to make a statement clarifying the guidelines under


which references are made to the commission? Is he aware that there is considerable confusion about the criteria?

Sir G. Howe: The question of the criteria applied to references to the commission was the subject of statements by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State concerned with industrial development before Christmas and by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State concerned with industrial and consumer affairs during the Committee stage of the Fair Trading Bill. There is no intention at present to add to those statements.

Dr. Gilbert: Is the Minister aware that, following his refusal to investigate the circumstances surrounding share dealings in Slater Walker and Hill Samuel, I wrote to the City Take-over Panel? The panel said that it could do nothing and referred me to the Stock Exchange. I wrote to the Stock Exchange Council, which was unable to say what dealings had taken place or at what time before or after the announcement to merge. Can the right hon. and learned Gentleman tell the public what safeguards they have against unscrupulous manipulators if he will do nothing, if the Stock Exchange Council does not know what is going on and if the City Take-over Panel will do nothing?

Sir G. Howe: The hon. Gentleman postulates the premise of unscrupulous manipulation. He is aware of the powers which my right hon. Friend and I have under the Companies Acts. If he has any further information in relation to the transactions, I shall be glad to receive it.

Sir D. Walker-Smith: Can my right hon. and learned Friend give the criteria in respect of the departmental consent referred to by him in his initial answer to the Question?

Sir G. Howe: I would need notice before giving the precise criteria, but I believe that. once a merger has been abandoned, it is unusual for the Department not to consent to withdrawal of the reference.

Travel Trade

Mr. Dykes: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will hold urgent discussions with the travel

and tour operators' industry on the creation of a draft code of conduct for consumer protection in advance of the appointment of a Director General of Fair Trading.

Sir G. Howe: The Association of British Travel Agents already operates a code of conduct which includes provisions relating to conduct between its members and the public.

Mr. Dykes: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that that answer might be regarded as a little complacent, which is extremely uncharacteristic of him? The situation is urgent. Does he agree that many thousands of holidaymakers are seriously disadvantaged and are in considerable difficulty as a result of the exchange crisis, but that there are also less immediate problems, such as the premature cancellation of holidays? Does he not feel that it is time to have more fundamental discussions with the industry in advance of the Director General's appointment?

Sir G. Howe: As I have already pointed out, the association has a code of conduct dealing in particular with the point raised by my hon. Friend, including the alteration of holiday bookings already made. In addition, an amendment to the Fair Trading Bill which is under discussion in another place today will give the Director General a specific and identifiable responsibility for the promotion of codes of conduct of this kind.

Mr. Alan Williams: As the Minister will not accede to the request to act before the Fair Trading Bill becomes law, while it is still going through the House will he consider investigating, with a view possibly to taking legal action, the activities revealed in the Sunday Times and Daily Mirror of a pyramid sales firm called Memory World which sells its products at five times the normal market price on the cruelly fraudulent and medically discredited ground that they will prevent breast cancer?

Sir G. Howe: The hon. Gentleman's supplementary question does not arise directly out of that which is before the House, but investigations are being made into some of the claims made by the company concerned to which the hon. Gentleman has referred.

Japanese Colour Television Sets

Mr. Norman Lamont: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry whether he has any plans to limit imports of Japanese-made colour television sets into the United Kingdom.

Mr. Peter Walker: The Japanese authorities are well aware that I have been watching the position closely and that I hope the exchanges between the two industries that are now taking place will prevent the deterioration in the situation which would oblige me to take action.

Mr. Lamont: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, although the Japanese television industry is extremely efficient, there is the suspicion that it is benefiting from subsidised credit and subsidised promotional costs? Is he further aware that the stocks of colour television sets in this country are very high, that the number could reach 600,000 by the end of the year and that this is a threat to the viability of the industry in this country? Other countries have taken steps to restrict imports. Should we not do so before our industry is endangered?

Mr. Walker: I am aware of the potential dangers, and that is why talks are taking place. Under the international agreements to which we subscribe, restrictions can be imposed if imports cause or threaten injury to the domestic industry. We are watching the situation very closely.

Mr. Wilkinson: Is my right hon. Friend aware that it is a question not only of Japanese-made imports but of Japanese-designed sets made by Japanese subsidiaries in Europe, particularly in the United Kingdom? This matter is causing grave concern to those of us representing constituencies which have greatly profited from the recent boom in colour television set manufacture.

Mr. Walker: We are in close contact with the industry. Talks are taking place between the Japanese industry and our own.

Mr. Mason: The talks should come to a quick conclusion, because it is not just a question of colour television sets. According to the May figures, we exported £25·7 million worth of goods to Japan but Japan exported to us £39·2 million worth

in one month—a 50 per cent. balance of payments surplus—and that figure was 97 per cent. higher than the figure for May of last year. What are the Government doing to rectify this big trade imbalance?

Mr. Walker: The volume of our exports to Japan is rising very fast due to Japan relaxing a lot of restrictions. In replying to a Question when the right hon. Gentleman was not present, I pointed out that exports to Japan have increased by 55 per cent. for the first five months of this year. There is an important two-way balance of trade. We have a very considerable surplus with the Japanese on invisible exports. However, we made it clear to the Japanese Government that we shall not have an industry like the television set industry ruined by imports.

Beer Sales

Mr. William Price: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what percentage of beer sales go through managed public houses; and what was the figure five years ago.

Sir G. Howe: The latest available estimate shows that in September 1972, of the total beer sold through retail outlets owned by brewers, less than 45 per cent. was sold through managed houses. The corresponding figure for the last quarter of 1967 was 40 per cent.

Mr. Price: The Under-Secretary has been quoting figures from the Brewers Society showing that the percentage of public houses going over to management has not increased significantly in recent years. However, is not the figure that the Minister has quoted this afternoon far more significant in the sense that the brewers are taking over the best public houses and leaving the others to the tenants? As the brewers already have the manufacturing and the wholesaling profits, is it a fair trading practice that they should grab the retailing profits as well?

Sir G. Howe: The figures I have given have to be looked at alongside the figures for the number of managed houses and tenanted houses that my hon. Friend has given the House. The general subject of the matters mentioned by the hon. Gentleman I propose to discuss shortly with the brewers, and I intend also to arrange a


meeting to discuss it with representatives of the licensed victuallers.

Mr. Lipton: When will the Government do something about the Erroll Report, which goes to the root of the matter and about which they have taken no action whatever?

Sir G. Howe: That is a question for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department.

Mr. Mason: Is not the Minister aware that, as the increase in managed pubs becomes more evident and as the licensed victuallers are phased out, the traditional British pub is being destroyed, and that a manager has no interest in the darts club, the angling club or similar social community organisations that use public houses, which in some areas are the centre of community activities which are now being denied? Is it not time that he impressed on the Brewers Society the need for an examination of the adverse social aspects of this change?

Sir G. Howe: It would not be right to conclude that all the consequences of the change are adverse in the way the right hon. Gentleman suggests. It should be borne in mind that 74·9 per cent. of outlets are still tenanted. However, I will certainly bear in mind the points that have been made in any discussions I have about this matter.

Ranco Motors Ltd.

Mr. James Hamilton: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what reply he has sent to the letter from the hon. Member for Bothwell concerning the factory of Ranco Motors Ltd.; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Anthony Grant: A reply to the letter of 20th June from the hon. Member was sent on 4th July.

Mr. Hamilton: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that reply. The factory owned by Ranco Motors Ltd. at one time employed 1,700 people and the firm had received all the appropriate Government grants. When it stood off the workers and closed the factory, the firm made 500 workers redundant. Government grants have been given in respect of the new factory in Livingston, now employing close on 200 people—or it soon will

be. The company itself has categorically stated that the workers from my constituency who have been made redundant were the finest in the country and trained to do the job, although they have now been thrown on the scrap heap. Many of the workers at Livingston, however, are having to be retrained. Is not all this a gross misuse of public money?

Mr. Grant: The company's decision to go from one specific development area to another, namely Livingston, was made on commercial grounds and I do not think that the Government ought to interfere with that—it is within the same special development area. I am advised that no special assistance has been given to the company that is not available to any other company. I accept that this was a first-class work force, but of those made redundant only four men and 35 women are still registered as unemployed, and as vacancies have increased by 200 per cent. it should be possible to get them placed very soon.

Mr. Hamilton: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In view of the unsatisfactory nature of that reply, I beg to give notice that I shall raise the matter on the Adjournment at the earliest possible opportunity.

Electricity Generation (Oil Consumption)

Mr. Edwin Wainwright: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what was the consumption of oil by the CEGB for each of the last five years.

Mr. Emery: The figures are as follows:

Year
Oil Consumption (million tons)


1968–69
5·2


1969–70
7·5


1970–71
11·1


1971–72
13·0


1972–73
14·6

Mr. Wainwright: What is the amount of coal consumed by the power stations? Is it true that there has been a reduction in that amount over the past three years? Does the hon. Gentleman recollect that on 1st June the Prime Minister said that the CEGB would be able to burn all the coal likely to be produced by pits in this country? Is he aware that stocks are growing and that 35 million tons of coal are now in stock? When are we to make certain that the coal mining industry is


made fully aware of the Government's policy? Why cannot we have coal-fired power stations? Why cannot new pits be sunk?

Mr. Emery: Offhand, I cannot give the five-year figures, but I will certainly send them to the hon. Gentleman. Only about 20 per cent. of the CEGB current capacity is oil-fired and 70 per cent. is coal fired. That ensures that there is reasonable flexibility. The CEGB considers it necessary to have a proper balance of all forms of firing.

Sir G. Nabarro: I endorse the wisdom of my hon. Friend's reply, but will he now confirm that all available coal in the foreseeable future—that is, in the next few years—will be available for burning under power station boilers and that the CEGB will not resort to oil fuel unless that is absolutely necessary?

Mr. Emery: I do not have to point out to my hon. Friend that the decision must rest on the comparative prices of the fuels.

Mr. Eadie: As we have today heard allegations that the CEGB is pretty bloody-minded about coal-fired power stations, would it not help the CEGB to decide about oil if the Minister were to make a statement about the information. now filtering through, that the landing of North Sea oil will be behind schedule, mainly because of technological difficulties?

Mr. Emery: At the moment there is no need for any slow-up in the landing of North Sea oil. The CEGB certainly takes the national interest into account, and, the Government when they are reviewing any application, of course regard the national interest as absolutely overriding.

Shipbuilding

Mr. Willey: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry whether he will make a statement on Government aid for the shipbuilding industry.

Mr. Peter Walker: Aid to the shipbuilding industry is available under different sections of the Industry Act 1972, and totalled £21·2 million in the financial year 1972–73.

Mr. Willey: Does the right hon. Gentleman appreciate that we are awaiting the Booz-Allen Report? Would

he at least say whether the Government accept its main contention, namely, that to be fully competitive the British shipbuilding industry must have a high level of capital support? He has spoken of the Industry Act 1972, but does he not realise that that is not sufficiently specific to give the industry confidence?

Mr. Walker: As the right hon. Gentleman knows, my right hon. Friend the Minster for Industrial Development made a statement on this subject when he pointed out that already a substantial number of the figures in the Booz-Allen Report had been shown not to apply in the short term because of the big increases in orders. We are now discussing the report with the unions and with the industry itself to ascertain what would be a sensible policy for the future.

Dame Irene Ward: Is my right hon. Friend now able to say when the Government will have made up their minds about the Booz-Allen Report? Will he remember that the shipbuilders will want a debate in the House before any decisions are implemented by his Department? May we have that pledge, which is important?

Mr. Walker: A debate is a subject for my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House.
We asked for written observations on the report and these have all now been received. A range of talks is now taking place; for example, we met the unions last week. I expect soon to be in a position to give our observations on the report.

Mr. James Johnson: Would the right hon. Gentleman confirm that the two main items of the Booz-Allen Report were the lateness of deliveries and, even more significant, the inefficiency of the industry's management?

Mr. Walker: I am pleased to say that there has been a substantial improvement in both management and industrial relations in a number of major yards. The order books for almost every major yard are incredibly better than they have been for years, but it is vital that these ships should be delivered on time.

Price Code

Mr. Biffen: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will


make a statement concerning the revised code for the guidance of the Price Commission that is planned for the autumn, in the light of the latest evidence of prevailing trends in domestic prices and profit margins and the overall level of demand in the economy.

Sir G. Howe: The latest economic indicators suggest that the economy is growing in line with the Budget forecasts. I am not yet ready to make a statement concerning any revision of the code for the autumn.

Mr. Biffen: Is my right hon. and learned Friend satisfied with the way the Price Commission is interpreting the current code? Notwithstanding his reluctance to anticipate any statement concerning phase 3 in the autumn, can he none the less take this opportunity to say whether he expects the autumn code for prices to be more relaxed or more stringent?

Sir G. Howe: As was explained to the House at the time the code was adopted, we certainly need time to see whether it is likely to need any change. It has been working for only two months. It is worth noting that during that period only one-third of the applications have been approved in full by the Price Commission. Of the remaining 162 dealt with up to the end of June nearly two-thirds were either approved in reduced form or withdrawn after scrutiny by the commission.

Mr. Benn: Is the Minister aware that it is not the prices in phase 3 which is now concerning the community but those in phase 2? Is he aware that with a rapid increase in prices, many of them authorised by the commission, with wages rigidly controlled, with a crisis in living standards for people affected, and the fresh impetus to rising prices given by a fall in the value of the pound, the Government must make clear their policy for price control during phase 2? When are we to debate the Price Commission report with that in mind?

Sir G. Howe: The Price Commission report will be available for discussion no doubt once it has been published. What needs to be fully understood is the extent to which the commission is exercising a firm and effective control in preventing

prices being increased as far as they would otherwise be in the light of changing costs of commodities entering this country.

Mr. Powell: How can any code lay down general principles for deciding in advance which prices should rise and by how much and which should fall and by how much?

Sir G. Howe: A code can, as this code does, indicate to the commission which performs the task the extent to which costs which bear upon prices should or should not be passed through. Such a code can and does have a significant effect upon price levels.

EXCHANGE RATES

Mr. Healey: Mr. Healey (by Private Notice) asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement on the fall in the value of the £sterling and the international currency crisis.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Anthony Barber): After the regular monthly meeting at Basle of the Bank for International Settlements, the Central Bank Governors, in a statement, recalled the communiqué of the Ministerial Meeting of the Group of 10 issued in Paris on 16th March which included the following:
The Ministers and Governors agreed in principle that official intervention in exchange markets may be useful at appropriate times to facilitate the maintenance of orderly conditions, keeping in mind also the desirability of encouraging reflows of speculative movements of funds.
The Central Bank Governors at Basle concluded that this approach remained appropriate and noted that the necessary technical arrangements are in place to implement it.
The Governor of the Bank of England will, of course, be reporting to me later today on his return from Basle.
I should add that recent movements in rates in the foreign exchange markets, whether of sterling or of other major currencies, do not correspond with movements in relative costs and prices in the countries concerned.

Mr. Healey: May I first agree with the Chancellor's last remark, that the changes in parities which have taken place


over the last week or two are quite out of proportion to the real economic facts which should justify them? All of us will feel it intolerable that manipulators of money should be allowed to play ducks and drakes with the jobs and living standards of the peoples of this and many other countries. I must confess that I was extremely disappointed and surprised by the poverty of the Chancellor's reply.
Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us, on the international side, whether it is the case, as might be implied by the agreement to which he referred, that the central banks are now prepared to use the arrangement already made to limit changes in currency parities? Secondly, will he undertake urgent talks with other Governments to control short-term capital movements which are the main cause of the current problem and are likely to increase enormously in scope as the Arab oil revenues are added to the mass of footloose funds available in the world?
Thirdly, in view of the fact that the expectation that the pound might be devalued to enter the common European float may be one reason for the fall in the parity of the pound, will the right hon. Gentleman give the House and the world a firm undertaking that he will continue the float at least until inflation in Britain is as far under control as it is in our competitor countries?
The Chancellor avoided making any reply to my initial question asking him to comment on the devaluation of the £sterling. The £sterling has now been devalued 18 per cent. compared with the level just over a year ago. That is a far greater fall in the value of the £sterling than took place in 1967. Will the right hon. Gentleman accept the view of the overwhelming majority of the British people that he must now take urgent action to protect those most hurt by the fall in the value of the £sterling against its consequences on the cost of living? Would he not agree that this 18 per cent. devaluation in the pound—[HON. MEMBERS: "Too long."] Not too long at all. Would the Chancellor agree that this 18 per cent. devaluation of the pound is likely to push the increase in the cost of living during phases 1 and 2 of his prices and incomes policy above 10 per cent. at a time when, as we know from figures given last week, the standard of

life of the majority of British people has been falling, at a time when the national wealth has been increasing by 5 per cent.?
Will he therefore immediately reverse the attitude he took in the House last Thursday and immediately increase pensions, family income supplement and family allowances and introduce new subsidies on food prices? Is he aware that unless he does this he will be inflicting suffering on the overwhelming majority of the British people, which is totally inconsistent with his duties as Chancellor?

Mr. Barber: I think that the right hon. Gentleman will on reflection appreciate that it is not and never has been the policy of this Government to disclose matters concerned with intervention in markets. Short-term capital movements are a matter of great importance. The right hon. Gentleman is right to stress this and it is one of the matters on which I hope we shall make progress in the reform of the international monetary system. As he knows, there is to be another meeting, which I shall be attending, of the Committee of 20 in Washington later this month.
I have in the past explained the circumstances in which we shall be joining the common European float, and I have nothing to add. I must tell the right hon. Gentleman that I know of no evidence that the pace of inflation has been faster in Britain than in the generality of other European countries, to anything like the extent that would be required to justify the recent fall in the exchange value of sterling. The right hon. Gentleman referred to the effective rate of sterling and he will be pleased to know that just before I came into the Chamber the effective rate of sterling as compared with the closing effective rate on Friday evening has improved by one-half of 1 per cent.

Mr. Skinner: Big deal.

Mr. Barber: Turning to the last of the series of points which the right hon. Gentleman put to me, the alternative policy which the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues chose when they had responsibility was to impose massive increases of taxation all round, to bring the economy of the country to a grinding halt, to fritter away our reserves, to put


this country in pawn to overseas creditors to the tune of £1,500 million and in addition to devalue the pound. That was a disastrous policy and the whole country knows it.

Mr. Edward Taylor: Does the Chancellor's statement mean that he considers that sterling is undervalued at present? Does he see any greater scope for the use of gold to stabilise international currencies? Finally, is there any precise guidance that he can give to holidaymakers who, because of the present uncertainties, are being taken to the cleaners in international markets?

Mr. Barber: I recognise the problem for those who are holidaying abroad. This is the result of the temporary uncertainty which is affecting all major currencies.
There is no doubt that on any objective criteria sterling is undervalued at present.
The question of gold is obviously one of the matters being discussed in connection with the longer-term reform of the system.

Mr. John Mendelson: Accepting the Chancellor's view that on normal commercial grounds the pound ought to have a higher value in the exchange markets today, and agreeing that it is in the national interest that this view should be made known and accepted on the continent and in other exchanges, may I ask whether he is aware that when one has discussed this matter with people who deal in money on the continent in the last 10 days the answer invariably given has been, "We understand that the Chancellor has entered into a private agreement with the French Government to bring the pound back on a much lower level than it is today into the bondage of the agreement into which he originally entered"? Is it not, therefore, in the national interest that he should respond to my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) and give a categorical denial that he has entered into any such agreement?
Secondly, will he answer my right hon. Friend's further question, that the pensioner and the lower-paid, who are now suffering severely under this galloping inflation, will be looked after before October and that the Government will take immediate action?

Mr. Barber: The hon. Gentleman is either deliberately trying to make matters worse, or, alternatively, he is wholly ignorant. I assure him and the House that there is no truth whatever in what he says.

Mr. Tapsell: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that there is a growing body of opinion which feels that if the situation deteriorates further, particularly on the capital movements side, consideration should be given to the introduction of two-tier exchange rates here as in France?

Mr. Barber: I know that this view has been put forward in the past, but I believe that the past few weeks have established beyond doubt, as I think my hon. Friend from his interest in these matters will agree, the urgency of working out a reformed international monetary system. If I may say so—obviously I speak not only on my own behalf but on behalf of others who preceded me—no country has pressed harder for a reformed international monetary system or put forward more constructive proposals than the United Kingdom, first, by the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) and, more recently, by myself.

Mr. Pardue: As the Chancellor said that sterling is under-valued, may I ask him how he assesses value? For instance, what to the Chancellor is the value of any currency other than that which those in the market will pay for it? Since June 1970, by what percentage has sterling sunk vis-à-vis a weighted average of other European currencies?

Mr. Barber: The objective criteria which, over the medium term, are taken into account and become effective, are in the main relative costs and prices. That is why I said that it would be wrong to assume that the present rate of sterling and, therefore, the change from any given previous point in time represents a rate which is justified by those objective criteria.

Mr. Tugendhat: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the main causes of the present crisis are the short and long-term doubts surrounding the dollar? When he considers the creation of a new international monetary system would he agree that we have reached a stage where it


has become an urgent necessity to devise a new numeraire or co-ordinate to take the place of the dollar? In the long run clearly this can be done only with the co-operation of the United States, but does he agree that in the short run there are arguments in favour of joint European action to protect us against the basic weakness of the basis on which our currency system rests?

Mr. Barber: The members of the enlarged Community recognise full well the immense importance of the cooperative effort we are making together. We are also conscious that inevitably, because of all the implications, these matters are bound to take time. However, we are in constant touch with our colleagues in the enlarged EEC.
I am sure that the United States authorities are fully aware of the difficulties which are caused by the present instability.

Mr. Harold Wilson: I agree with the Chancellor about the great importance and stability of sterling to the whole country regardless of any party divisions. When the pound was devalued by floating last year we made no political points about it—indeed, we supported his action and helped to strengthen him in what he was doing—and we do not intend to take political advantage of the further devaluation of sterling on the lines of the present Prime Minister in his hysterical broadcast in 1967, which is on record. If we are to have any newspapers tomorrow, I hope they will reprint it.
In order that we may help the right hon. Gentleman in what he is trying to do, may I ask him to turn his attention again to the question posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone (Mr. John Mendelson)? The Chancellor rather gave the impression either that he did not understand the question or that he was determined to evade it. May I help him both to understand and to answer it? Will he give an assurance that there will be no pegging of the parity of sterling in 1973?

Mr. Barber: I answered the question put by the hon. Member for Penistone (Mr. John Mendelson) perfectly clearly. As I have said before, we shall join the

EEC margins scheme at an appropriate time.
Turning to the point made by the right hon. Gentleman about the broadcast by my right hon. Friend in 1967—

Mr. Harold Wilson: And yours.

Mr. Barber: And mine. I was about to say that my right hon. Friend's broadcast—I hope that any that I made can be included in the same category—was excellent and apposite to the circumstances at the time. The right hon. Gentleman talked about 1967, but I hope that he realises that there is nothing in the present situation, unlike 1967, which need cause us to bring the present good progress in the economy to a halt.

Several Hon. Members: Several Hon. Members rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I am in some difficulty. There are two statements, a Standing Order No. 9 application, a matter of privilege and two debates, in one of which many hon. Members wish to speak. Therefore, supplementaries on this Question must stop fairly soon.

Sir B. Rhys Williams: Does my right hon. Friend agree that a large part of our currency difficulties on this side of the Atlantic are due to the disappointingly slow rate of progress in making the European Fund for Monetary Co-operation into an effective institution? Will he agree to an early meeting of the Council of Ministers to consider the Commission's proposal for the pooling of reserves?

Mr. Barber: The week before last we had a whole day's meeting of the EEC Ministers at which these matters were discussed. The importance of moving towards a pooling of reserves is certainly recognised by all the members of the enlarged EEC.

Mr. Healey: Cannot the Chancellor offer one word of comfort for the pensioner and the housewife in this situation? He steadfastly refused to give an undertaking of any action whatever before the autumn to help those who are suffering severe hardship as a result of the failure of his policies. If he is not prepared to introduce direct measures to help those in greatest need, will he at least undertake that he will immediately revise the prices code which is under severe attack by members of the Commission, including the chairman, Sir Arthur Cockfield, as reported in the


Sunday Telegraph yesterday, because it gives the Commission totally inadequate powers to deal with exploitation by businessmen of the present situation in order to raise prices?

Mr. Barber: Matters of the code go wider than this Question.
I answered the other matters mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman when deal-ling with the subject the other day. I conclude answering the points put by the right hon. Gentleman by making a plea to him to take note of what was said by his right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition about being helpful.

EUROPEAN SECURITY AND COOPERATION (HELSINKI CONFERENCE)

The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Sir Alec Douglas-Home): With your permission, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, I wish to make a statement.
As the House will be aware, I represented the United Kingdom at the first stage of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe—CSCE—which took place in Helsinki from 3rd to 7th July.
Two important results were achieved. First, the final recommendations of the preparatory talks, which began in Helsinki last November, were unanimously approved. This means that there is an agreed basis for the work of the second stage of the conference at which the questions of substance will be tackled. Secondly, it was agreed that this second stage should open in Geneva on 18th September preceded by a meeting of the Co-ordinating Committee starting three weeks earlier on 29th August.
In Helsinki last week the representative of each participating State was able to state his country's views on questions affecting security and co-operation in Europe. A number of delegations tabled specific proposals for discussion at the second stage. In my own speech I sought to place the emphasis where I believe it belongs: on the need to change for the better the conditions of life for ordinary people in the continent of Europe. I am putting a copy of my speech in the Library of the House, together with the proposals

which I tabled and a copy of the communiqué issued in Helsinki on 7th July. The Final Recommendations of the Preparatory Talks are already in the Library.
I believe the House will welcome the fact that preparations can now go ahead for the next phase of this conference, which could well be of such great importance to Europe, since it is at this second stage that we hope that recommendations on specific practical measures can be worked out and agreed.

Mr. Callaghan: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that report. It appears, does it not, that this was the first halting step on the road from confrontation to co-operation? May I ask the right hon. Gentleman about the Press conference at which there was some difference on the question of mutual balanced force reductions, what is the position in relation to that, and whether he takes a different position from that of his colleagues?
Further, is the right hon. Gentleman aware that everyone, I hope, wants to see arms reductions so that we can transfer the burden, but that we expect these discussions to result in both sides feeling as secure at the end of the discussions as they felt before they started?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for what he said, and I endorse it. A different official title is being given to what we used to call the mutual balanced force reduction conference, but I made it clear in what I said that this is a concept which must prevail. The relative position of the two alliances must remain the same.

Sir D. Dodds-Parker: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there was widespread support at the European Parliament last week for the proposals which he and other delegates put forward for practical action and not just for empty speeches which were rather too apparent among other delegates?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: Yes, Sir, and that is why the second stage is so important. We have a detailed agenda to which the Russians have agreed. As the items come up, the onus will be largely on them and the Eastern Europeans to say what they will be able to do about increased talks and the increased exchange of ideas and people.

Mr. Russell Johnston: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that, apart from the general reduction in tension which we all welcome, one of the most positive factors that emerged from the Helsinki conference was the degree of co-ordination among both the 15 members of NATO and the nine members of the EEC?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: That is true. There was careful preparation, and we are resolved that the preparation will be as complete for the second stage.

Mr. Haselhurst: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there will be widespread satisfaction that he and others placed so much emphasis upon the free exchange of persons and ideas in Europe? Can my right hon. Friend assure the House that no less emphasis will be placed upon this subject in future negotiations?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: Yes, Sir. No less emphasis will be placed on this subject. Unless we can get a freer exchange of ideas and more contacts between people the exercise will not be a success.

Mr. Dalyell: What initiative did the Foreign Secretary take on the matter of atmospheric nuclear testing?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: None, Sir. It was not the appropriate forum.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: May we take it that in these negotiations there will be no question of accepting as permanent what Mr. Brezhnev euphemistically described as limited sovereignty in the European countries of the East?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: Every country has sovereignty and controls its own internal affairs. Mr. Gromyko talked of a code of conduct for Europe and I think, therefore, that we have to work this out and see what the Russians mean.

Mr. Cronin: Would not the right hon. Gentleman agree that the security of Western Europe would be much more satisfactory if he could induce the Government of France to co-operate more closely in its defence?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: It is for the French to say how far they are willing to co-operate. France is a member of NATO—that is sometimes misunderstood

—and underlines the whole time that she is a member of the NATO Alliance. It is a matter of working out the practical contribution that France makes to the deployment on the ground.

Mr. Wilkinson: Will my right hon. Friend assure the House that when he goes to the Geneva discussions and deals with matters of substance he will under no circumstances allow any curtailment of the broadcasting services to Eastern Europe but will, rather, seek an expansion of them as they are important for the free exchange of ideas?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: My hon. Friend may have seen the idea that I put forward for increasing the broadcasting facilities available both to the West and to Eastern Europe. That was only one of the things put forward among many that will be discussed.

Mr. Molloy: I agree with the right hon. Gentleman and thank him for what he said at the Helsinki Conference that the basic idea is to remove distrust and to enrich the lives of ordinary people, but would he agree that one of the problems that would confront all nations if they entered into genuine disarmament disagreements would be what to do with former armaments factories? Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that that might be a subject for frank and open discussion? When the nations run down armaments, as we hope can come about, there ought to be a certain amount of discussion and negotiation to try to find alternative sensible uses for what were armaments factories.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: On the earlier point raised by the hon. Gentleman, I thought that the President of Finland put it in a sentence that can hardly be bettered when he said that the general purpose of this conference and of its successive stages is not to put up barriers but to open gates. That explains what it was all about.
The details of disarmament and consideration of action that must be taken on the ground will be dealt with at the mutual balanced force reduction conference that begins at the end of October.

Mr. James Johnson: Did the right hon. Gentleman take the opportunity at the


Helsinki Conference to speak to his opposite numbers in Iceland and West Germany about the cod war and what was happening, and what we might do in conjunction with them about it?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: Yes, Sir. I took the opportunity to speak to the Foreign Minister, but the conditions remain unchanged.

HEARING AIDS

The Secretary of State for Social Services (Sir Keith Joseph): With your permission, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, I wish to make a statement on behalf of myself and my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Scotland and Wales about important steps which the Government are taking to improve services for the deaf.
As hon. Members will know, the hospital-based treatment of deafness has been an integral part of the National Health Service, and has included the provision of a range of hearing aids for those likely to benefit from their use. But as knowledge has grown, the body-worn Medresco aids which have served us so well are ceasing to be fully adequate. We propose, therefore, as part of the National Health Service to provide over the coming years a behind-the-ear aid free of charge for all adults for whom it is suitable, and for children who already receive this type of aid. This will offer an alternative to Medresco aid users, and help many who do not now use a Medresco aid and cannot afford a commercial behind-the-ear aid. These people will for the first time be able to benefit from the hospital-based clinical and allied services in obtaining an aid and in using it effectively.
The numbers involved are large—probably one million or more. The cost will be met from the resources available for the expanding health service programme, but it will necessarily take time to produce enough suitable aids, and to secure suitable staff. We therefore aim to begin issuing the new aids in the autumn of next year, and to complete the operation over five years. This programme will offer the opportunity to British industry to establish large-scale manufacturing facilities for head-worn hearing aids with

potential benefits for overseas as well as home sales.
In the first year we propose to give priority to war pensioners who require aids for accepted disabilities; mothers with young children; children of any age and young people receiving full-time education; young people whose behind-the-ear aid has been replaced by a body-worn model on leaving school; people with an additional severe handicap, such as blindness; people with exceptional medical need not included in these groups.
There are many other people with impaired hearing, both of working age and elderly, outside these groups, and we shall therefore be consulting the bodies concerned to help us in determining priorities for the second and later years of the programme.
Even with this new aid not all needs will be met, and in particular some of those suffering from sensorineural deafness may not be helped. Further research is required, and the Medical Research Council is taking steps to encourage fundamental studies.
We recognise that other services for the deaf call for improvement. There are shortages of trained staff, which will take some years to remedy. I must emphasise that a great range of skills needs to be secured before we can apply our existing knowledge to those who might benefit, and that much new knowledge needs to be won before substantial groups of the deaf can be fully helped. We hope that the National Health Service and local authorities, in partnership with the voluntary organisations which have done so much pioneering work. will strengthen these services as quickly as practicable.

Mr. Alfred Morris: We welcome the Minister's statement, but is he aware that we also pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt) and Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) for the sustained pressure they have exercised on this deeply important matter? Is the Minister also aware that there are many who feel that there has been unconscionable delay in effecting this improvement? How many new aids does the right hon. Gentleman envisage will be available each year after next autumn? Is there any chance of speeding up the proposed timetable for distribution? Is the Minister aware that other


services for the deaf call for urgent improvement, not least those available to deaf children? The right hon. Gentleman's statement referred to hearing research. Is he able to make any comment on the likely effect of the recent Rawson Report on hearing research arising from Section 24 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act? Finally, what is the cost of the proposals announced today?

Sir K. Joseph: I think that the whole House respects the services of the hon. Members for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavia) and Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley), but I do not think that the hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Alfred Morris) has any right to bring party politics into his question. The Labour Government did precisely nothing to help the deaf.
The decisions on the Rawson Report are primarily for the Medical Research Council whose first batch of decisions has already been announced. Two specialist committees are being set up to carry the work further.
I expect the cost of the provision of the hearing aid to rise to a peak of £5 million in 1978–79, and there will be an additional cost of about £1 million per annum when we have recruited sufficient staff.

Sir John Hall: In welcoming my right hon. Friend's statement, may I ask what discussions he has had with the industry about the possible effect of this decision upon the industry as a whole and in particular on its export trade?

Sir K. Joseph: My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State has had at least two discussions with the industry at my request, and we are well aware of its views. In the interests of the deaf people who look to the industry, it is most important that it should continue in a flourishing condition. My hon. Friend and I are willing to see representatives of the industry as necessary. I do not believe that any damage will be done either to the industry's overseas trade or to its home trade.

Mr. Ashley: There will be other occasions on which to ask the Minister questions about other aspects of

deafness. I have been campaigning for years for these improvements to be made and there can be no qualification, no half praise and no prevarication. The Minister, deserves the full credit of the House for making this great advance in helping deaf people. Thousands of deaf people will be deeply indebted to him for his generous statement.

Sir K. Joseph: The hon. Gentleman is as generous as he is robust.

Mr. Hugh Fraser: I, too, congratulate my right hon. Friend on this generous and imaginative proposal. Am I right in saying that those who cannot obtain these machines through the National Health Service will have to pay VAT on the instrument bought?

Hon. Members: No.

Mr. Pavitt: I join my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) in saying that this is a sunny day for those of us who have been interested in this subject for a number of years. Will the mercury cell batteries also be free? They cost about 14p per cell, which is a heavy charge. Will the right hon. Gentleman take action to reduce the price of the cells when the additional demand arises?
The right hon. Gentleman knows the complications that will ensue from the additional provisions which he has announced today. Will he take immediate action to solve the personnel problems which will arise, possibly by bringing in as part of the task force registered dispensers under the Hearing Aid Council and by discussing with the Department rehabilitation and the training needs for the otological services? Will the right hon. Gentleman immediately establish departmental working parties to give him quick results?

Sir K. Joseph: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. Batteries will be free. We are well aware of the need for a whole range of skills, and I am slightly daunted by the list on pages 5 and 6 of the Rawson Report of all the skills that need to be multiplied. It is our intention to multiply those skills, but the time for the carrying out of this programme is largely related to the difficulty in recruiting and training the extra skills needed.

Mr. Burden: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on this further intimation of his compassionate feelings for the disabled and on the help that he is giving to deaf children. Will he consider the position of severely disabled children, of whom there are many in schools. who are equally deserving of his compassion and imagination?

Sir K. Joseph: The House is being so kind that I must repeat the warning that it will take some time to reach all the people who can benefit from this proposal. We need a great increase in knowledge before we can help the deaf. I hope that the multiplication of combined services in hospitals will improve the diagnosis, assessment, treatment, aftercare and social help for deaf children and their families.

Mr. Robert Hughes: Will the Secretary of State look particularly at his priorities and bear in mind that there are some deaf people who in their ordinary jobs have to deal with the public and find it impossible to carry out their work because of the unsuitability of present hearing aids? Will he be flexible in his policy and allow such people to obtain priority for the new aids?

Sir K. Joseph: It is because we want to understand the implications that we shall consult voluntary and other interested bodies concerned about the priorities after year one.

Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: I thank my right hon. Friend warmly for this news today and for his care for the deaf. Will he ask his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science always to bear in mind that, as deaf children will have to earn their living and live their lives in the hearing world, it is tremendously important that they should not be incarcerated as weekly boarders in schools for the deaf? I ask that, wherever possible, they should be daily travellers, for example, from Arkholme and Lancaster to Preston, rather than staying in Preston during the whole week.

Sir K. Joseph: I must leave that question to my right hon. Friend, but I will draw her attention to it.

Mr. Mayhew: At the end of his very welcome statement the Secretary of State referred to other groups of deaf whom it

was difficult to help. Will he bear in mind the particular hardship of those who are both deaf and mentally sick or handicapped? Will he look at the excellent work being done at Whittingham, which is an improving hospital, and see whether somehow the very highly qualified staff cannot be found for other mental hospitals of that kind?

Sir K. Joseph: The Government are well aware of the outstanding work of Dr. Denmark and his team at Whittingham. We are trying to repeat that unit in the South.

Dr. Stuttaford: Will my right hon. Friend accept my congratulations not only on behalf of myself but also on behalf of doctors who treat the deaf and, above all, deaf children? Will he look at the problem of the multi-disciplinary assessement centre for the early diagnosis of deafness in children, because this must be the answer? Taken purely and early, they may miss out on some of the other handicaps later.
Does my right lion. Friend agree that it might be a good idea always to refer to "deaf people" and to "deaf children" rather than to "the deaf" or "the handicapped", thus trying to personalise the problem slightly more?

Sir K. Joseph: We are convinced that we need multi-disciplinary assessment centres for all disabilities, including deafness. We have authorised the building of 50, which are now being either designed or built at present, and that will suffice to cover about one-third of the country. We shall hope to continue that programme later.

Mr. Carter-Jones: While I warmly congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his step forward, may I ask him if now he will move forward one stage further to deal with those who are totally deaf, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley), and can we move forward rapidly on the use of new technologies, such as print-out, line writer, television screens and the talking brooch, which would enable the totally deaf to communicate with us in this place and at schools?

Sir K. Joseph: The hearing aid will primarily help those suffering from conductive deafness but will also benefit


many suffering from perceptive deafness, but by no means all. We shall certainly bear in mind the hon. Gentleman's suggestion.

Mrs. Knight: Will my right lion. Friend permit me to join in the all-party chorus of approval for his statement, which surely must have set in train a long-ranging improvement for a group of people who have been neglected for far too long? Will he also bear in mind the need to cut the hospital waiting lists for children who have ear problems, and particularly those who may lose their hearing or whose hearing may become impaired unless they reach hospital fairly coon?

Sir K. Joseph: Yes, we shall do our best to cut waiting time. I am glad that my hon. Friend emphasised the long-term nature of what we have to do. The Scandinavians, who are very far ahead of us in their services to the deaf, started what we are announcing today 15 years ago, and they still reckon that they have a great deal to do before they can help all the deaf.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: I do not wish to act the ghost at the wedding, but will my right hon. Friend recognise that there are, perhaps, some serious implications in the statement for the commercial hearing aid industry? Will he confirm that there is a significant minority of the deaf who cannot and will not be able to benefit from the Medresco aid, whether head worn or body worn, and that if the announcement today were to have the effect of doing serious damage to the commercial dispensers, people will be deprived of a choice? This is against the background of a statement which will surely arouse more expectation than it will be able to fulfil and should be a source of preoccupation to us all.

Mr. Pavitt: Nonsense.

Sir K. Joseph: If the result were to be as my hon. Friend suggests, it would be very sad indeed. I agree with him that there are and will always be many people who, for one reason or another, will prefer to go to the commercial hearing aid industry. I hope that in my statement today I have not aroused expecta-

tions unduly. I have twice gone out of my way to emphasise that it will take some years before we reach even those who will be helped by this ear-worn hearing aid. I have emphasised that there will be many, particularly with sensorineural deafness, who will not necessarily be helped by this aid.

MILK (REGULATIONS)

Mr. English: I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 9 for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely
the fact that the Separated Milk Regulations 1973 and the Separated Milk (Scotland) Regulations 1973 purport to impose criminal penalties upon all persons in England, Wales and Scotland for the performance of acts undefined by those regulations and, therefore, do so contrary to law.
Let me first apologise to you, Mr. Speaker. I have given notice of this matter to you, Mr. Speaker, through the Clerk of the House and your Secretary, but I was unable to do that before noon, as is the custom, because this matter was originally brought to my attention only late this morning by my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow-in-Furness (Mr. Booth). He then drew my attention to the 10th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, which reports adversely upon the regulations applying to Scotland which I have mentioned. I need not go into details of the Committee's adverse report, because the Committee reported adversely on two grounds, neither of which is the ground that I am now raising.
During my discussions with various Officers of the House and others, however, after my hon. Friend had raised the matter with me, I naturally looked at the original regulations. I found that the Scottish regulations, which came into force on 14th June, are an almost identical copy of the English regulations, which came into force on 1st April.
The Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments reported upon those English regulations, but in that case did not make an adverse report. Indeed, the Committee said that it did not need to draw the


special attention of both Houses to them. With respect to the Committee, I think that that was an error, in the light of its second report.
The essential point, if I may quote from the English regulations, is that:
No person shall deliver, or cause or permit to be delivered, on or in pursuance of any sale for human consumption any separated milk which is not semi-skimmed milk or skimmed milk delivered, in either case, as such.
The regulations define "separated milk" as
milk other than raw milk and whole milk
and say that:
'raw milk', 'whole milk', 'semi-skimmed milk' and 'skimmed milk' shall have the same respective meaning as in … Regulation 1411/71
of the European Community.
Regulation 1411/71 does not contain any definition of whole milk. I submit, therefore, that this attempt to impose criminal penalties upon someone is an attempt to impose criminal penalties for an act undefined by law.
This is the second time, Mr. Speaker, that I have had to raise a matter that is the responsibility of the Ministry of Agriculture and the Department of Social Services. On the former occasion you will recollect, Mr. Speaker, that the result ultimately was a butter subsidy, which, apparently, originally the two Departments did not know about.
This matter concerns the same two Departments, partly assisted by the Scottish Office. They have apparently looked at an earlier translation—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is going very near to a substantive speech on the merits of the situation. He is making application under Standing Order No. 9.

Mr. English: I bow to your ruling, Mr. Speaker. I think that I have proved the importance of the point. Its urgency arises from the fact that there are penalties, not only fines but imprisonment, and continuing fines, purported to be imposed by these regulations and, therefore, the liberty of the subject is involved.
It is clear that these regulations are void, under Community law and English law, and under Scottish law. I suggest,

Mr. Speaker, that this matter deserves urgent consideration.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman was good enough to give notice at, I think, about 2.30 p.m. today, that he intended to make his application. The Standing Order says:
A Member intending to propose to move the adjournment of the House under the provisions of this order shall give notice to Mr. Speaker by twelve o'clock, if the urgency of the matter is known at that hour.
I am not clear as to how the situation has changed since 12 o'clock or between 12 o'clock and 2.30 p.m. In any event, I do not think that I would have allowed the application. I do not intend to allow it. There are other ways in which the hon. Member can raise the matter. If the hon. Member needs advice as to that, it will be given to him.

Mr. C. Pannell: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. You have just raised the point that my hon. Friend did not give you the due notice. Although my hon. Friend has not given you due notice, he has made his speech and his submission. It seems that it would be far better, with great respect, Mr. Speaker, if you could indicate that at the beginning of a Member's speech. It might save a degree of oratory and save the House some time.

Mr. Speaker: Those seem to me to be two very worthwhile objectives. However, I think I must allow an hon. Member the opportunity to prove to me that the situation has changed since twelve o'clock.

COMPLAINT OF PRIVILEGE

Mr. Wilfred Proudfoot: On a point of Order, Mr. Speaker. I, too, apologise for the short notice I was able to give you.
I wish to draw attention to an article in yesterday's colour supplement of the Sunday Times entitled
Shell versus Parliament—a study in parliamentary impotence 
I am advised that this may be a breach of parliamentary privilege. Members who serve on these Committees have to affirm they have no private or constituency interest by signature as a statutory obligation and they act in a semi-judicial capacity when they serve on these Committees,


I believe that this article is a distortion of what happens and, therefore, a breach of parliamentary privilege.

Mr. Speaker: Will the hon. Gentleman bring the document to the Table?
I am obliged to the hon. Member. In accordance with the usual practice, I will rule upon this matter tomorrow.

STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS

Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to order [22nd March],

That the draft Redundant Mineworkers and Concessionary Coal (Payments Schemes) Order 1973 be referred to a Standing Committer on Statutory Instruments.—[Mr. Pym.]

Question agreed to.

URBAN TRANSPORT PLANNING (EXPENDITURE COMMITTEE'S REPORT)

4.22 p.m.

Mr. James Allason: Mr. James Allason (Hemel Hempstead): I beg to move,

That this House takes note of the Second Report from the Expenditure Committee (House of Commons Paper No. 57) on Urban Transport Planning, and of the relevant Government Observations (Command Paper No. 5366).

This is the Second Report of the Expenditure Committee in this Session. It is also the second report undertaken by the Environment and Home Office Sub-Committee. Although I have the honour to be the Chairman of the Sub-Committee, I took over as chairman only at the conclusion of the report on urban transport planning. Before that, my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Sir John Hall) was the very able chairman who navigated us through a year of investigation. His ability was then recognised by his promotion to being chairman of a Select Committee. It therefore falls to me to present the report.

I thank the many organisations and individuals who sent in memoranda, the many witnesses who gave evidence, and also the members of the Sub-Committee who patiently assimilated a vast mass of evidence that we received.

The terms of our inquiry are summed up in paragraph 11 of our report: that the increasing public concern about the transport situation, particularly in larger cities and towns, shows the need for positive policy decisions to avoid
social and environmental damage and the breakdown of public transport facilities.

We therefore examined transport planning in the conurbations with particular reference to the journey to work. A transport system that can cope with the journey to work in rush-hour conditions is probably well on the way to coping with conditions at other times.

The essential feature is the need to improve public transport. Public transport is in a continual decline. There is the vicious spiral of higher fares being introduced; these in turn lead to fewer passengers; those passengers turn to their motor cars and add to the congestion on the roads; the public transport service then becomes poorer; in turn, it is necessary to raise fares. We get into the vicious spiral once again.

This might be acceptable if everybody had access to a private car and could move about freely in it. However, a large proportion of the population do not have private cars and few of those who do have exclusive access. Therefore, a large number of people rely on public transport, which must be available and convenient.

We found that what we felt was an undue proportion of the expenditure within urban areas had already been allocated to roads. The tendency is that a road in an urban area gets planned and then it is left on the plan. Expenditure on the roads gets allotted. In consequence, a large sum out of the total available urban transport is already allotted to roads.

In consequence of that, we made Recommendation 22, that trunk and principal urban roads which are in the planning stage should be re-examined. Here we are not suggesting that every urban road should be abandoned but that they should be re-examined, because many such roads have just been assumed to be necessary.

This recommendation has been widely misunderstood. It has been taken to be a recommendation that all motorways should be abandoned. It refers only to urban roads and does not say that all urban roads even should be abandoned, only that they should be re-examined.

We recommend a switch in resources from urban road building to the improvement of public transport.

Recommendation 8 is basically that there should be operating subsidies for public transport. In paragraph 7 of the White Paper the Government agree that revenue support is available. I take it that to that extent the Government are agreeing to this very important switch in priorities.

Just spending more money on urban public transport does not necessarily improve it, because the motorist is congesting the roads during the journey to work. The number of cars on the roads doubles once every 10 years. The figures given in paragraph 18 of our report are interesting. In 1950 there were 2¼ million cars, in 1960 5½ million, and in 1970 11½ million.

The trouble is that those who own cars tend to want to use them. That is fine. We welcome the use of cars and that people should have cars, but please not in the rush hour because it means that buses, which are greatly relied on, particularly in cities outside London, for the journey to work, are just sitting in traffic jams. We therefore recommend priority for buses.

We suggest that there should be better facilities for "park and ride". I am sure that every hon. Member is familiar with that term but may not be so familiar with what is a new term to me—"kiss and ride". That term is used to describe the situation where the wife takes her husband to the station and, instead of the car being parked, she kisses him and drives home.

The tendency is for people to try to drive through to the city centre, and they are encouraged to do so because there is plenty of parking space there. A complete revelation to me was the extent to which parking space has been provided in city centres. In central London about 50 per cent. of parking spaces is under office blocks. The reason for that is that since the war there has been a requirement that under new office blocks a substantial number of car parking spaces must be provided. The GLC realised that all it was doing was providing a magnet for more and more cars to flow into London, and it reversed its policy. In this it was entirely wise. A maximum has now been placed on the number of parking spaces that can be provided, with only a few spaces under each new building.

This is not the practice elsewhere. In Birmingham, for instance, they continue with the old policy, and that is why we have said in recommendation 15 that this practice should be discouraged by getting rid of existing user rights so that physi-

cally there should be fewer parking spaces under office blocks. The Government have not accepted this recommendation. They say that there might be difficulty about extinguishing existing user rights, but I had in mind that all that was necessary was to give planning permission for change of use. Change of use from car parking space to storage space would provide a more valuable use of basements, and in consequence firms would tend to move over, free of charge to the Government to the extinguishment of their existing user rights.

The private car owner is not the only villian of the peace. Heavy lorries are also to blame for congestion but I do not pretend that there is any magical way in which heavy lorries can be kept out of urban traffic. We suggest that special routes should be provided, and also overnight parks in order to avoid the nuisance of these vehicles parking in residential streets. These recommendations are already in process of being implemented. But this implies that there should be special suitable routes available for heavy lorries, and this to some extent negatives the idea that we need not provide any more routes in our cities.

I believe that our report shows rather a change of emphasis. While it used to be thought possible to fit cities to accept all the number of cars that wished to flow into them, it is now recognised that the environment of our cities will be destroyed if we try to accommodate the motorist to the extent he would like.

I welcome the Government's observations on our report. The Government generally concur with our analysis of the problems. I believe that this is a useful report, and I hope that it will prove a turning point in the relief of urban traffic congestion. I hope that the House will accept the report.

4.35 p.m.

Mr. Tom Bradley: The House will have welcomed the publication of this report, and will be extremely grateful to the hon. Member for Wycombe (Sir John Hall) and the members of his Committee for the very hard work they have put into fulfilling their terms of reference, and for the very penetrating analysis they have achieved of an extremely difficult and crucial problem in our urban areas.
Similarly, the House will appreciate some of the courageous conclusions reached by the Committee.
The House will also be obliged for this opportunity, albeit very brief, for discussing the Select Committee's report. I can only wish that more parliamentary time was allocated to this purpose, but at any rate we are very grateful for the way in which this task has been discharged by the Committee and for the opportunity we now have of discussing its work.
The Government's response to the report published last week I suspect is rather different from what it would have been two years ago, or even one year ago, reflecting, as I am sure the report does, the very valuable pressure of public opinion on these matters, to say nothing of the lessons the Government may have learned from the GLC elections in April.
The fundamental conclusion of the Select Committee that national policy should be directed towards promoting public transport and discouraging the use of short journeys to work in city areas is unquestionably right and is shared by a growing number of people. The evidence on which the Committee's conclusion is based has been very well documented in recent years. Side by side with an increase in the number of private cars, growing at the rate of 8 per cent. a year. there has been a steady deterioration in both the quality and the quantity of our urban public transport services.
Over the ten-year period from 1960 to 1970 there was a fall in the number of passenger journeys together with a dramatic decline in bus mileage over the same period. As public transport usage has declined operators have been forced to raise fares and reduce services. A dwindling number of passengers is travelling on fewer services run at increasingly higher fares. Additionally, the growing use of private transport at peak periods doubly accentuates the difficulties public transport has to face in providing the services. On the one hand, therefore, passengers and revenue are being lost to private transport, and, on the other, the resultant traffic congestion prevents the remaining public fleet from providing the reliable service on which the majority of people still depend—a vicious circle indeed.
We must not overlook that majority of people who depend on public transport. Although 53 per cent. of all households own a car, if the head of the household uses it to travel to work the rest of his family are just as immobile as are the 75 per cent. of the lower income group and the 95 per cent. of pensioners who are not car owners. It is estimated, I understand, that even by the year 2000 less than 50 per cent. of our adult population will have the exclusive use of a car, a forecast to which the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. Allason) referred.
In the meantime, driving potential passenger traffic to private transport by a combination of higher fares and inefficient inferior services will only make worse traffic congestion, pollution, road accidents and the high capital costs of new roads and of off-steet car parking facilities.
The time has arrived to break through this circle. There is, I think, little hope of a voluntary transference by car owners to public transport unless the latter can be improved out of all recognition. To this end, there will have to be a massive shift of resources from roadway construction to public transport if we are to have faster and more frequent services, lower fares and more comfortable vehicles. Such major improvements in reliability and standards can be obtained only by securing greater freedom for buses to move on the streets. This brings me to the question of curbing car access to our congested urban centres.
The method of restraint favoured by the Select Committee and, apparently, by the Government, is to discourage car usage by various pricing policies, especially heavier metering. Apart from the effect of such a policy in bearing more unfairly on the less-well-off car owner, it is, surely, a mistake to argue for more parking meters, not fewer, for that would do nothing to hold down the level of car commuting, and traffic congestion would continue at peak times. It is no use providing more multi-storey car parks and meters while still being concerned about the level of traffic. The public will not be convinced of the credibility of a policy of that kind. It might be more worth while to dispense with meters on all our main roads during office hours


and to have all chief thoroughfares made into yellow line areas.
In addition, there may have to be some physical restraint on the entry of private cars into the very heart of our cities, and this could involve their complete exclusion during office hours, leaving the area open to bus and accredited taxi services.
The City of Leicester, which has lone held pride of place and been pre-eminent in traffic management matters—I am bound to say that, in all modesty, I hope—has begun an experiment along these lines, mixing pedestrians and public transport as a first step towards the full pedestrian precinct. All the concerns over matters of safety have been taken care of and the various anxieties have not been realised. The experiment has been a great and growing success.
Such measures have to be combined, as the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead said, with "park and ride" facilities—incidentally, another system pioneered by the City of Leicester. Indeed, so successful has park and ride been in Leicester that calculations show that in the four weeks up to Christmas 1972 no fewer than 8,000 cars were kept out of the centre of the city. It is a system which is being more and more used and appreciated by car owners living in the suburbs and on the periphery of the city.
If we combine these measures—the mixing of pedestrians and public transport in the heart of our cities and the provision of park and ride facilities—I am sure that we shall go a long way towards achieving a happy balance in the use of our transport facilities while at the same time maintaining the quality of urban life. The alternative—let there be no doubt about it—is to accommodate the car at all costs. I do not believe that the majority of the public today are willing to do that.
Outside our central urban areas, where cars would be allowed, it may be necessary to develop bus-only lanes and counter-flow techniques to facilitate the free flow of bus traffic. I see no other way of developing a first-class bus service.
With great respect to the Select Committee, I was a little surprised that it made no recommendation about examining the possible costs and benefits of a

fares-free transport system. There are many strong arguments both for and against such a system. I acknowledge that the cost would be considerable, but public transport costs must be seen in the wider context, for the cost of overcrowded roads ultimately falls on the community anyway. I believe that it would be helpful if the Government authorised an early study of the fares-free concept in terms of public transport's duty to perform a service for the community.
I agree with the hon. Gentleman also that the question of lorry routes is of extreme importance. Probably no more than 20 per cent. of lorry traffic is through traffic, but it is usually the heaviest. We must confine it to special routes, and I greatly hope that the Private Member's Bill now going through Parliament will be implemented. I acknowledge at once that, if special routes are to be allocated for the heavy through traffic across our urban areas, this will require substantial additional expenditure on the widening, strengthening and improvement of our roads, together with the provision of essential lorry parks.
We know too little as yet of the proposed working of the financial grants system to be brought in in 1975–76, the system to which both the Select Committee and the White Paper referred. I cannot help feeling that, despite the recognised intricacies, it might have been better to introduce a new general transport grant, including a minimum element based on the needs and resources of a particular area plus a percentage element to encourage extra provision. In addition, discretionary grants ought to be available for special infrastructure developments, as ought special operating subsidies, by agreement with the local authorities and the Department.
In the long term, the solution to urban congestion must be the decentralisation of job location, limitations on urban sprawl, and more flexible hours of work within a shorter working week. In the meantime, I should be the last to pretend that there are simple or painless answers to our urban transport problems. These problems will not go away, and, while local authorities and local people must be intimately concerned and consulted, the main responsibility for policies and finance rests with the Government. It is


for the Government to give a lead, and I hope that the Secretary of State will go further than his Department's statement last week did in leading us towards a solution of these serious problems.

4.50 p.m.

The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Geoffrey Rippon): The whole House will be grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. Allason) for the constructive speech he made in introducing the debate, and I should like to join my hon. Friend in expressing thanks to the Expenditure Committee for its work and its most helpful report. The sub-committee assembled an impressive array of evidence, and its report has made an important contribution towards a wider understanding of a complex problem. My hon. Friend was right in describing it as a penetrating analysis. It also contains some courageous proposals, and I found it of immense value. I hope it is clear not only from the observations on the report but from the recent direction of policy that the Government welcome its general conclusions.
Urban transport arouses strong feelings among many people for reasons which we all understand. My hon. Friend gave revealing statistics about the growing use of the private motor car. I have certainly shared these anxieties for a long time. Speaking in 1965 at the National Housing and Town Planning Council I expressed the view that:
In learning how to plan for life in spite of the motor car we must not destroy historic city centres just to replace them by two-tier highways and multi-storey garages. As the likelihood is that traffic will expand to fill every vacant space unless and until it is deliberately limited by taxation or by control of parking we will only succeed in erecting a planners hell at enormous public expense if we do not tackle this basic problem.
So I hope it is clear that my sympathies have been with the Committee for a long time.
I went on to recommend, as my hon. Friend suggested, the adoption of the "park and ride" system and greater use of public transport. I am glad that Leicester took up some of my ideas. I cannot claim that the concept of "park and ride" was my own. As the expression would indicate, the idea came from the United States, and I was much influenced by what was done in San

Francisco, where it was decided not to get rid of the trams in order to have two-tier highways but to do something to restrain the motor car.
As the hon. Member for Leicester, North-East (Mr. Bradley) said, there is no easy answer to these problems and virtually any action whether to restrain cars or build more roads or create environmental areas makes things better for some people but worse for others. So it is not just a case of either traffic restraint and management or better public transport or more urban roads. There will have to be a suitable combination of measures which will necessarily vary according to local circumstances.
Where the net advantage lies can vary in different places and the evidence is often not clear cut. My Department has a continuing programme of research and development in these matters and many of the issues raised in the Committee's report are ones to which we are giving further consideration. We need also to take account of the implications for urban transport of the financial future of the railways and the priorities between different areas of transport expenditure. Against that background the Government's observations on the committee's report are not the last word on this subject; and we shall have more to say later this year.
There is one other general remark I should like to make. The committee's report and the Government's reply are concerned mainly with conurbations and other large cities and with peak hour journeys to work. It is in these places and at these times that the problems of road congestion, inadequate public transport and damage to the environment are most severe. It is therefore right that we should concentrate on these situations, but it does not mean there are no problems elsewhere.
The Expenditure Committee's main conclusion with which the Government agree is that it will be necessary to limit the use of private cars for peak-hour journeys to the centre of large towns and cities and to ensure that public transport can offer an attractive alternative. The need for restraint is not a conclusion we have come to with any great relish. Personal transport is in many ways more convenient than public transport; it gives us


access to a wider range of amenities and it is a sign of growing prosperity.
I am sure that no one on the Opposition side wants to give the impression that we are trying to clobber the motorist. Many hon. Member may have read Jane Jacobs' book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities". While saying that everyone who values cities is today disturbed by automobiles she nevertheless acknowledges that perhaps we blame automobiles too much. She says:
Good transport and communications are not only among the most difficult things to achieve, they are also basic necessities. The point of cities is multiplicity of choice. It is impossible to take advantage of multiplicity of choice without being able to get around easily".
As American experience has shown, and as we are beginning to see in some of our big cities, unmanageable city vacuums are by no means automatically preferable to unmanageable city traffic. But cities are places to live in, not just to move about in. In the longer term most of us are now agreed that provision for the unrestrained use of the car would involve road building on a massive scale which would totally change the character of our major cities and put an increasing demand on limited resources which many people, including myself, think should be devoted to solving more pressing problems, including the improvement of housing conditions. But in the longer term cities it would be physically impossible to provide for complete motorisation even if the resources were unlimited.
In the shorter term unrestrained use of the car means increasing congestion which delays essential and inessential traffic alike and means a declining standard of service, particularly for those who rely on the buses. Traffic has been tending to fill up the new capacity created by road improvement and therefore we have not made a fundamental contribution to solving the problem which we all know exists. It may seem unfair to restrain the use of the car, but it may be even more unfair to leave people who have no alternative with a dwindling standard of public transport. Restraint may not at first sight appear attractive to commerce and trade but nor is increased and costly congestion which holds up deliveries as well as customers. It is not for the Government to dictate how

particular restraint policies will be implemented in every town and city but it is clear that many local authorities are using parking policies which are, as the Committee suggests, completely out of date.
I am sure that the Committee was right in saying in Recommendation 14 that parking provision for commercial premises should be restricted, rather than the reverse. Equally, we must look at the levels of parking charges, as it says in paragraph 10, and see that restrictions, where these are imposed, are enforced. That is why the Government are already committed to introducing owner liability at the first opportunity. We are also considering the levels of fines and fixed penalties which at present apply and we shall announce proposals as soon as possible. In the medium term, supplementary or area licensing can be the answer. Road pricing is a long-term possibility. But these raise issues on which we shall have to give more consideration before reaching definite conclusions.
If the private car is restrained, public transport must be able to provide an adequate alternative. Here I have a great deal of sympathy with what the hon. Member for Leicester, North-East said. I always like to think of myself as in some ways a railway man. I could never understand the extraordinary philosophy once put forward by the railways that somehow everything would come into balance by having higher fares and a lower level of activity. That seems to lead to the conclusion that the only way to strike a balance is by having no business at all.
We are in general agreement that we must improve public transport. Some cities like London and the provincial conurbations will need new and improved rail systems. Since July 1970 the Government have authorised payment of infrastructure grants totalling about £200 million for projects including the Fleet Line, the Tyneside rapid transit system and two rail schemes in Liverpool. However, I agree with the Committee's comments about the substantial capital cost of rapid transit systems and that it is always right to look at cheaper alternatives.

Mr. Nigel Spearing: The Minister mentioned the Fleet Line. Will he clarify that? Is it not correct that


so far he has authorised the Fleet Line only as far as the City and not to the south-east? Will he give more details about this?

Mr. Rippon: Stage 1 has practically been completed and the expenditure authorised. Discussions are continuing with the Greater London Council about stage 2, and there is also a committee studying that scheme.
Outside the major conurbations commuter railways are unlikely to make a major contribution. As the Committee rightly recognised, public transport will for the most part means buses. Over the past few years my Department has, in collaboration with the local authorities, been undertaking a major demonstration programme to try out different ways of making bus services more attractive. It is clear that what people chiefly want is a quick, comfortable and reliable service. That can be achieved only by freeing buses from congestion, either by giving them priority over other traffic or by reducing the general level of congestion so that buses can flow freely. It will almost certainly be necessary to give financial assistance to buses to help them provide a satisfactory level of service at prices competing with what the ordinary motorist thinks is the cost of making a journey by car. That must be an adjunct to, not a substitute for, measures to improve the quality of service.
We are probably generally agreed that in the immediate future our main emphasis must be on achieving greater restraint on the private car and making public transport an acceptable alternative. But that does not mean that we can easily put on one side the need for new and improved urban roads. It is clear that there are certain kinds of roads which on balance are wholly beneficial to urban areas. Much of the existing road network is unsuited to modern traffic. However much is done to restrain car journeys at peak hours and to improve public transport, most of our cities will need new and improved roads, particularly orbital roads, to provide an adequate network and allow environmental improvements in areas from which through traffic should be excluded.
I welcome what the hon. Gentleman said about the Private Member's Bill on the routeing of lorries, which we hope is

going through the House satisfactorily. The truth is that we cannot have routes for new lorries unless those routes exist. In central London, for example, about 2030 per cent. of the traffic in the inner area should not be there at all, and does not want or need to be there.

Mr. Frederick Mulley: Has the Secretary of State considered what is done in a number of continental cities, such as Paris, where there is a low limit to the size of lorry allowed in the central part of the city, and the heavy loads have to be broken down on the city outskirts? Are we not looking to that kind of development?

Mr. Rippon: It is a possibility. We also need to examine the very important part played in Paris by the orbital roads—a matter that we have not faced up to in this country—because it causes all sorts of difficulties. It was as long ago as 1943 that the Abercrombie Plan suggested two ring roads for London as the only effective means of reducing traffic in the central area. The Nugent Committee in 1956 considered various proposals put forward in 1948 and 1954. There have been all sorts of proposals for new west cross roads all involving bridges across the Thames. Now I find myself, in 1973, having to say that I cannot approve a west cross route without a river crossing. because it does not make any sense to thrust more traffic right through the very heart of London.

Mr. Arthur Palmer: Does not the Secretary of State agree that very often orbital road schemes attract into cities traffic that would otherwise go round them?

Mr. Rippon: There are great problems. That is why we have been discussing them ever since 1943. A series of reports have come broadly, if reluctantly, to the same conclusion.
We all know that the construction of new roads can cause considerable disruption to the traffic and the areas through which they pass. But I hope that the recommendations of the Urban Motorways Committee and the measures Parliament has recently passed to provide improved compensation, soundproofing, and better landscaping will make it possible, albeit at a price, to deal with heavy flows of traffic in a way that will


often be less damaging to the environment than leaving the traffic on existing roads.

Mr. George Cunningham: Can the Secretary of State throw any light upon the report in the Sunday Times yesterday that the Government were asking that some parts of the route of Motorway 1 in London should be safeguarded, and that that was being done at the request of the national Government against the wishes of the GLC? Can the right hon. and learned Gentleman confirm or deny that?

Mr. Rippon: I saw the Sunday Times article. Like most of the Insight articles, it is a curious combination of garbled facts, distorted comment and misleading assertions, all of which the newspaper could put right if it bothered to ask the people and Ministers most concerned. Therefore, I cannot go into all that the newspaper said. I have stated my position about London ringways, and I do not think I need go beyond it. I have approved in principle the proposals which were in the Greater London Development Plan, but I am now waiting for the views that the new GLC may express on the modifications it may wish made to the plan put before me. That is how the matter stands. and it cannot be changed by an article in the Sunday Times.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead was right to say that it would be wrong to call a complete halt to urban road building, we should not abandon the programme but should certainly reexamine it. I agree that in respect of many of the proposals we need to change our approach. Wherever possible we need to switch to public transport.
I felt it right, however, not just to brush to one side the difficulties that arise over orbital roads in particular, and to pretend that we no longer have to consider any of those possibilities in any circumstances. But generally I shall look to the new county councils, including the GLC, to review their road building plans in the light of what I have said, and what the public and the committee have said, when they draw up the comprehensive statements of transport policy on which the Government propose that grants for transport should be based after next year.

Mr. Douglas Jay: When the right hon. and learned Gentleman talks about orbital roads, will he note that in London at any rate there is a great distinction between outer orbital roads, to which very few people have raised any objection and which do little damage, and the inner orbital roads, where there is great objection indeed? He did not seem to be making that distinction.

Mr. Rippon: I was not going beyond the statement I made when the Greater London Development Plan was published. That is on the record and stands, subject to the discussions which go on with the GLC about its present views, and subject to any views it may express about modifications it would like in the proposals. I cannot go into the merits of particular schemes, but I take the right hon. Gentleman's point. Certainly, there is less controversy about the outer orbital roads.
Meanwhile, local authorities have already been asked to review the individual schemes they are preparing, in the light of the Urban Motorway Committee's report. Before any grant is made to any further schemes we shall need to satisfy ourselves that the environmental effects are acceptable or can with modification be made so.
My Department is reviewing trunk road schemes in urban areas against the same criteria.
I turn to the second main recommendation of the Committee, which is that central Government should have a positive policy for urban transport, laying down a broad approach which it should ensure that local authorities follow. For the reasons set out in paragraphs 10–13 of the Government's reply to the committee's report, we do not go all the way with its recommendations on this point. But the difference between us is mainly one of degree. We believe that it is wrong to seek to control in detail the transport decisions of local authorities.
There are a number of reasons. First, transport is only one of the many interrelated aspects of land use planning for which local authorities are primarily responsible. Secondly, what we are essentially trying to do in urban transport, as in other areas of planning, is to take account of the needs and preferences of local


people, subject to overriding national policies and the resources available.
At the same time, it is possible for the central Government to lay down a broad approach. How that is translated into practice is to a large extent a local matter. That is why I say that it is right that the local authority, whether the GLC or any other authority, should have the primary responsibility for saying what it thinks is necessary to meet local needs.
I accept as the committee says, that these are urgent and substantial problems and that local authorities have not always been sufficiently bold or imaginative in tackling them. We must hope that the reorganisation of local government into stronger units will radically improve that position. The new county and metropolitan county councils will have responsibility not only for highways and traffic but for public transport. They will have new powers which, outside the conurbations, they have not had before to support financially public transport.
As part of next Session's legislation to deal with local government finance we shall be bringing before the House measures to abolish most of the existing specific grants for different aspects of transport. We shall replace them by a unified system covering local transport expenditure of all kinds. That will enable local authorities to prepare themselves for the kind of comprehensive approach on which the new system of grants will be based.
I hope that the new system will enable my Department to get away from much of the detailed checking of individual schemes which is necessary under the present system of specific grants. My Department can then concentrate instead on the broader strategic questions to which local authorities should now be addressing themselves and which are the subject of this debate.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead for his constructive speech and for what I think we can all regard as a valuable and important report.

5.11 p.m.

Mr. Robert C. Brown (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, West): I. too, am pleased to give general although not unqualified support

to the Expenditure Committee's findings. I pay tribute to the chairman and the members of the Committee for the tremendous amount of work that they have put into the report. I am particularly pleased, because the report and its conclusions are more or less a mirror image of the policies prepared by the Labour-controlled Newcastle City Council over 10 years ago in respect of road transport planning. They are policies with which I was closely identified as a member of the planning committee and as chairman of the city's highways committee. The policies which were then laid down are, I am glad to say, still being carried on in spite of the council's change of political complexion.
Those policies are not to the general acclaim of the citizens of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. No one likes the upheaval created by the building of an urban motorway, but everyone in the city, including the present protestors, will recognise the benefits from the completion of the east-central motorway and the connections thereto.
The Committee's first recommendation is that a national policy should be directed towards promoting public transport and discouraging the use of the car for the journey to work in city areas. Only a lunatic could disagree with that recommendation. One of the objectives of Newcastle's plan, which was thrown up in the early 1960s, was that public transport should be promoted and that the use of cars for the journey to work, particularly in the city centre, should be curtailed. We then saw the implementation of that objective as preserving the current level of bus use and controlling car parks in a manner which would deter the commuter. Accordingly we started our design work on the basis that 70 per cent. of peak period journeys to the city centre would be made by public transport.
Recommendation (3) refers to rapid transit systems. The planning authorities in the Tyne/Wear area commissioned Alan M. Voorhees and Associates Ltd. and Colin Buchanan and Partners—seconded staff to produce a Tyne/ Wear transport plan for the 1980s. That plan was published in March 1972. It included proposals for rapid transit. Investigations of rapid transit systems were carried out. As a result proposals for a Tyneside rapid


transit system were brought rapidly forward by the Tyneside Passenger Transport Authority. Even people who have criticised the creation of passenger transport authorities now conceive that the work can be carried out much more expeditiously under the auspices of the passenger transport executive than beforehand.
A Bill is now before Parliament, and when we clear the hurdle of another place we hope to start work on a system that will be of enormous benefit to the long-suffering commuters of Tyneside. The Minister has said that the ground is already available. I hope that we shall not have any long parliamentary debates, because the system is long overdue.
The Tyneside Passenger Transport Executive's detailed studies broadly justify the Tyne/Wear conclusions as indeed the Tyne/Wear conclusions broadly justified the urban long-term transport plans of the 1960s of the Newcastle council.
I completely support the Committee's recommendations about bus lanes and bus usage. When we have our rapid transit scheme fewer bus lanes will be called for in Newcastle, as buses will be used largely to feed rapid transit stations in areas away from the acutely congested areas. Of course, that will not be the general situation.
Where bus lanes are an urgent necessity the problem of enforcement arises. We must face the fact that no matter how much we spend on bus lanes, if the chief constable in the area adopts an attitude of non co-operation in enforcement measures the scheme is a dead duck. We must remember that outside London chief constables have the power of the Almighty in their own area and that they are not unnaturally against their men coming in for more bad odour from the motorists. One cannot blame them for taking that attitude. Therefore, they are not too keen to order tough enforcement.
The time has probably come to think about a special force responsible not to chief constables but to the planning and highways authorities for the enforcement of traffic law in urban conurbations.
I now turn to the recommendations in respect of traffic restraint in Newcastle.
The greater part of the city centre is covered by parking control. Charges are broadly related to the implementation of car parking policy. However, the city does not have the necessary powers to license car parks. When we consider that half the parking spaces in the city are controlled by private agencies it will be seen readily that licensing is of immense importance.
All that can be done at local authority level is being done at present—namely, by seeking to impose conditions on planning permission to limit the use of all-day parking places to the minimum necessary for the operation of the premises subject to the planning consent. It becomes abundantly clear that an effective car parking policy will be very much inhibited until such times as we have the necessary enabling legislation.
The Government must come across much more on this issue. They must clearly come forward and say, "We recognise that licensing is a must. We must introduce the necessary legislation." In Newcastle, as I have already indicated, we seek to prevent over-provision of car spaces in new developments. We attempt to secure a contribution from developers towards the provision of space in publicly operated car parks. Our plans in the 1960s for Newcastle provided for a widespread network of pedestrian precincts.
I was delighted to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, North-East (Mr. Bradley) say that Leicester had taken its first faltering steps towards the creation of pedestrian precincts. Newcastle has a major pedestrian precinct in the centre of the city. The Al north-south, Edinburgh-London route through the centre of the city is now probably as fine a pedestrian precinct as there is. It is in Northumberland Street and Saville Row. It has been in use for two years or more and is a tremendous success. When the eastern motorway is completed, we shall be able to embark on the extension of pedestrian precincts.
Special lorry routes are necessary A considerable amount of work in this respect has been done on a sub-regional basis in the Tyneside area. But, as with bus lanes, implementation and enforcement are horses of two different colours. Enforcement of lorry routes is absolutely


paramount and essential. We are simply wasting our time and a lot of money if we strengthen the roads for lorry routes and then, because of a lack of police enforcement, the lorry drivers simply take the back streets that they have been used to. My remarks earlier about bus lanes are applicable to lorry routes.
I wish to say something about the environment—a much overworked word. The environmental quality of a city depends to a great extent on keeping the commuter and through-traffic out of the centre. It is important to life in a city that good accessibility for road vehicles should be maintained for the supply of goods and from the point of view of the customer. We must therefore aim to achieve an effective balance between the use of road vehicles and public transport.
The phrase "ban the car" is an emotive one. It is appealing particularly to those of us who enjoy Saturday afternoon shopping in a pedestrian precinct like Northumberland Street, in Newcastle. But the problem cannot totally be met by public transport alone, either by buses or by rapid transit. Those who shout "Ban the car" the loudest tend to believe that they are the protectors of democracy and the democratic processes in the area. But democracy has a link with freedom. Freedom and democracy are worth working for and accepting some slight frustrations for. People who shout emotive phrases like, "Ban the car"—as though that could be done overnight, by decree—must remember that democracy, as with freedom, is something that we must cherish. People who make such demands must think in terms of a choice between democracy, freedom and dictatorship.

5.23 p.m.

Sir John Hall: There was a maxim which my mother was fond of continually impressing on me, namely, "If you cannot say something pleasant about a person, say nothing at all". It has had a great influence on me throughout my life, although I have found it a great handicap as a politician. However, I suffer from no inhibition in expressing my appreciation for the enthusiastic and untiring work of the members of the subcommittee of which I was privileged to be chairman at the time of the report. I do not think that any chairman could have had a committee which supported him better, nor clerks and clerical assist-

ants who did so much to help it. I pay tribute to them, and particularly to my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. Allason), who opened this debate.
I am under no inhibition, either, in paying tribute to my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for having the wisdom to accept the main theses advanced by the Committee in this report, together with most of the recommendations, although I am sure that he will not be surprised when I say that I shall have one or two observations to make about his comments on the recommendations. It is gratifying to note what appears to be a considerable measure of support on both sides of the House for the report. I wish that that was so in every debate, but I suppose that that is expecting too much.
There is—and I think that this will be generally agreed—some misunderstanding outside the House about what the report recommended. Judging by the reactions of some of the motoring organisations, that misunderstanding goes rather deep. Therefore, it would not be out of the way if I were to stress five of the main points, as I see them, of the Committee's recommendations.
First, the inquiry was concerned with large conurbations and major cities and not with the countryside and smaller towns. Secondly, it was particularly concerned with the traffic problems generated by the problem of journeys to and from work and not with restricting the leisure use of the car—again a source of misunderstanding by those who have not read the report properly.
Paragraph 18 of the report states:
It is not the ownership of the car which creates our problem but its increasing use in place of public transport in congested conditions at peak hours. We regard it as desirable and right that an ever increasing number of our people should possess a car for use on leisure journeys".
I hope that that removes any misunderstanding by motorists or the organisations which represent them.
Thirdly, the Committee stressed the need for radical and far-reaching improvement of public transport without which it would be impossible to impose the kind of restraints and restrictions on the private car suggested in the report.
The hon. Member for Leicester, North-East (Mr. Bradley) expressed some surprise at the fact that we had not considered the fare-free system and the possibility of introducing something of that kind. We considered this matter, not, I admit, in detail, but the evidence given to the Committee suggested that it was not fares or the cost of travelling which was the main consideration. Comfort, convenience and speed played a much bigger part than the cost of fares. We were also influenced to some extent by the experiment in Rome, which proved to be a ghastly failure—not that that in itself is conclusive because there were many undesirable elements about it which could not be said to make it possible to draw adequate conclusions from it. However, we took it into account.
Fourthly, as the Minister stressed in his observations on our report, the unrestricted growth of use of the motor car, particularly during peak hours, will lead to a continuing deterioration of public transport, with a corresponding increase in hardship to the many people still dependent on public transport, well beyond the 1980s. But, as the hon. Member for Leicester, North-East said, there will be a large number of not only old but young people who will have no car of their own and no access to a car. If we allow the public transport system to deteriorate, as it has been deteriorating, we shall impose severe hardships on many people for some years to come.
Lastly, while properly planned urban road development designed to relieve congestion and improve environmental conditions is to be welcomed, urban road development by itself should not be considered to be an answer to the problem. In some respects, it tends to exacerbate other problems of housing, health, education, and so on, as we pointed out in our report. All of us at some time are made painfully aware of the harmful effect of increasing traffic congestion on what is often loosely described as the quality of life. We have suffered either as residents in a city, or as motorists, cursing helplessly while sitting in a traffic jam, drawing in traffic fumes through the heating systems of our cars, and from time to time we have said: "They must do something about it". As is shown in the

reaction of motorists' organisations, when "they" do something about it, if that something means some control over our personal freedom of movement, our reaction is rather different.
I do not know whether hon. Members have had time to read an article in the Sunday Telegraph, by a Mr. Thompson. It was headed:
And now good-bye to Mr. Toad".
As we all know, Mr. Toad was a resident of Toad Hall and an early motorist. I quote a relevant paragraph of the article:
We are all environmentalists now, of course, and anyone can see the attractions of city centres where movement is quick and easy instead of slow and insufferably frustrating. But with environmental reform, as in other spheres, we tend to lose our ardour when they are being achieved at the price of our inconvenience. Sacrifice always seems more meritorious when someone else is making it.
We must bear this in mind when we are trying to push through measures that will restrict the movement of private cars in our cities.
The evidence produced to the Committee in relation to the journey to work showed that from the point of view of the community a system which relied increasingly on cars was almost certainly more expensive, even in pure economic terms, than one making greater use of public transport. There is full reference to that in paragraph 22 of the report. This situation creates greater environmental damage and, because it seriously affects the public transport service, it has an adverse social effect. The recommendations of the Committee are designed to remedy that situation.
In the main, these recommendations have been accepted, but in one respect the Minister's reactions to one of the two main recommendations seem a little equivocal. Paragraph 30 of the report says:
Over the last decade there have been strong pressures upon Central Government to devolve more of its responsibilities upon the local authorities.
My right hon. and learned Friend made a point of that.
Paragraph 30 continues:
This process is laudable in that it increases local responsibility and reduces the size of monolithic central departments, but only now is the complexity of the urban problem being recognised, with the interactive effects of employment, leisure, housing and transport upon


each other. We support the principle of devolution wherever possible, but we have come to the conclusion that transport in an urban setting poses such urgent and substantial problems that Central Government needs to play, much stronger rôle in the whole urban transport planning process.
That paragraph led us to our second main recommendation, that the Department of the Environment should have a positive policy for urban transport laying down a broad approach which it should ensure local authorities would follow.
In the reply to that, mainly in paragraph 11 of the Government's White Paper, it is stated
The Government think it is wrong to seek to control in detail the transport decisions of local authorities.
However, the Committee was not suggesting the control in detail of the operation of local authorities. It was saying that we should lay down a positive policy for urban transport and a broad approach which the Government should ensure local authorities followed. Perhaps this positive policy is implied in the control exercised under the new grants system which is outlined in paragraphs 12 and 13 of the White Paper.
Will the Department of the Environment refuse supplementary grant if a local authority follows a policy which deliberately ignores the Department's broad approach and lacks adequate provision for public transport? If it is prepared to do that, it will be exercising broad control over the operation of the policy through local authorities.
I turn to some of the individual recommendations. I am a little disturbed and—if I may say so, with such a strong Minister—slightly surprised, to find that some of our positive recommendations have been watered down to recommendations to local authorities to take note, or encouraging local authorities to follow our recommendations. There is phraseology of this kind when we ask that the authorities should be required to implement these recommendations.
This is dangerous, because we are facing an extremely grave situation that is getting worse month by month and year by year, and to allow piecemeal development of what should be national policy could produce traffic chaos throughout the country. It is up to the Minister to lay down quite firmly to local authorities throughout the country that

there must be a certain policy which they must follow. How they follow it and the detail of implementing it is up to them, because to some extent the circumstances of local areas must differ and we cannot legislate for all the differing local circumstances, but the Government can and must lay down a broad policy which the local authorities must be required to follow.

Mr. Rippon: If I intervene now, it may not he necessary for there to be a Ministerial reply on this subject. I hope I have not misled the House. Clearly, the Government must lay down the broad policy and may take appropriate steps to see that a local authority does not simply ignore national proposals, whether expressed in a circular, or in legislation.
All I wanted to do was to emphasise what degree of local responsibility there would be. We say in paragraph 13 of the White Paper:
In considering local authorities' estimates of expenditure, the Department of the Environment would expect to be satisfied that comprehensive policies were being developed based on an adequate level of evaluation and study.
That may be putting it gently. but the message should be clear.

Sir John Hall: I am relieved by that intervention and I shall not pursue the point. I was about to come to our Recommendation 13.
What are the difficulties that the GLC has met in establishing licensed street parking spaces open to public use?
In general, I warmly welcome the Government's reaction to the Committee's report. They have gone a long way to meet certainly our major recommendations and many of our more detailed proposals. I hope that they will find it possible to implement the recommendations and the policy outlined as soon as possible, because time is not on our side.

5.38 p.m.

Mr. Graham Tope: I listened with interest to the hon. Member for Wycombe (Sir John Hall), with whom I completely agreed. I begin by expressing my thanks and those of my party to the members of the Expenditure Committee for producing an excellent report. In general, I welcome the Government's apparent acceptance of certainly the main recommendations, although


still feel some disquiet about how the Government will enforce those recommendations.
In many respects, the results of previous urban transport policies can be seen at their worst in the outer urban areas, such as my own constituency and other parts of outer London, where we have relatively high car ownership and a poor public transport system. Indeed, in many outer London areas the public transport system has ceased to exist, leaving many people completely cut off.
The result has been a continued decline of public transport as it becomes more inconvenient, less frequent and more expensive, and inevitably more and more people turn to using their private cars. The result of that is that roads become more and more congested and the bottlenecks increase. As we all know only too well, motorists are increasingly using what were once quiet residential roads as what are called "commuter rat runs". What only a few years ago were quiet residential roads are now as bad as the main roads.
There are several things that local authorities can do already. They could and should enforce proper traffic management schemes to a much greater extent. That would help to relieve the problem, although one has to be careful when instituting such a scheme that one does not simply shift the problem from one residential road to another, as can so easily happen. Other measures could be taken to improve road junctions. That, too, is essential, but, again, one has to be careful not merely to shift a traffic block from one point to another.
But all that is tinkering with the essential problem. It may mitigate the worst effects of previous urban transport decisions but it does not get to grips with the problem itself. That is what the report of the Expenditure Committee has done: it has tackled the basic problem.
I warmly welcome the main recommendations. We need a balanced national transport policy geared to promoting public transport and to restricting the use of the car in city areas. I welcome the suggestions on how to achieve that. If we are to survive—and I mean "survive"—in urban areas, we must recognise that the future lies in providing

a cheap, frequent and convenient public transport service and for public transport to be seen as a social service and not as an activity run primarily as a commercial enterprise. Equally, I recognise that it is wrong merely to try to restrict the private car without providing effective public transport as an alternative.
In the observations that it has sent to hon. Members for this debate, the RAC seems to suggest that the Committee's recommendations and the Government's observations do not produce a balanced policy and will be unfair to car users. I am sure that most of us here are car users. The RAC seems to ignore the fact that previous transport policies have been heavily weighted in favour of private transport and against public transport. The time for correcting that imbalance is overdue. We now must weigh public transport against private transport.
Similarly, the RAC seems to assume that personal mobility will increasingly mean unrestricted use of private cars and that we are moving into an age of universal car ownership. Several hon. Members have already pointed out that that is wrong—that that assumption automatically ignores the poor, the old, the young, and the disabled, those who cannot now and probably never will be able to use the private car to give them personal mobility.
Hon. Members have probably seen the recent PEP report on Personal Mobility and Transport. It showed that in one Midlands city only 6 per cent. of the pensioners had driving licences and that only 6 per cent. of the pensioners lived in households with cars. What of the other 94 per cent, of pensioners in that city? The PEP found, similarly, that in a new town with two thirds of households owning cars only 11 per cent. of housewives had driving licences. Are the other 89 per cent. to be condemned to isolation, as would seem to be the logical conclusion of the RA C's observation?
In general, I welcome the Government's reactions to the Committee's recommendations and the fairly recent shift in the Government's attitude towards public transport, although, as usual, I fear, it does not go far enough. For instance, as the hon. Member for Wycombe pointed out, the Committee


recommended that in a number of instances local authorities should be required to take specific action, but the Government seem to say that the authorities should only be encouraged. We have yet to see what form that encouragement will take, but experience has shown, as paragraph 141 of the Committee's report would seem to show, that, unfortunately, many local authorities will need considerable encouragement if they are to take the measures that we should like them to take.
I would welcome the Government's favourable reaction to the proposal to establish bus lanes. I should like to hear about the Department's evaluation of the 13 projects now being considered. I am sure that the House will welcome today's report by London Transport of the success of the Oxford Street experiment. I hope that this enormous success will encourage the GLC and other authorities to undertake more experiments in London and other cities.
The subject of traffic restraint demonstrates the problems presented by authorities which refuse to co-operate in comprehensive transport policies. As was said by the Secretary of State, the parking policies of many authorities are grossly out of date. Paragraph 79 of the Committee's report clearly shows that a much more positive approach by the Government is needed.
I hope that we will see that approach. I share the concern of Labour Members at the Government's somewhat ambivalent attitude towards future road building. Of course we need a road building programme. No one queries that. But the Committee recommended that the Government should instigate a thorough, wholesale re-examination of all major trunk and principal road programmes. The Government seem a little reluctant to do this.

Mr. Allason: I made it clear that this is in the urban context. It is not all roads.

Mr. Tope: I should have made that clear. The Committee recommended a wholesale reappraisal of all urban road building programmes. The Government seem a little reluctant to adopt such a radical measure. I feel some concern that the Minister is not as strong and

forthright on that proposal as he is on others. The whole atmosphere of the Committee's excellent work was one of urgency. The tenor of this debate today is one of fairly general agreement on the main recommendations. Unless firm and prompt action is taken by the Government the work of the Committee and today's debate will have been in vain.

Several Hon. Members: Several Hon. Members rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I think that the idea is to divide the time between the two debates, but this one started rather late. I hope we will be able to continue it after seven o'clock. I have the names of nine hon. Members who want to catch my eye. I hope to be able to get them all in the debate.

5.47 p.m.

Mr. John H. Osborn: The work of a Royal Commission has been praised in the past. A Select Committee has one disadvantage; it takes up the time of Members outside the Chamber. This debate, the White Paper and the Report vindicate the Select Committee system. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Sir John Hall) and my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. Allason) upon having presented a background for this vital and urgent debate concerning all of us in our constituencies and particularly in constituencies which have urban and industrial areas attached to them.
The report has helped to put the value of the car in its true perspective. It has been available for six months now and has been a useful document for those seeking to review the subject. There is now a greater understanding of the value of the motor car as a passenger vehicle as well as of its limitations. There is a better appreciation of the advantages and limitations of mass transportation as against personal transportation. Even in driving to work there are advantages in personal transport. Every now and then those who rely upon buses are affected by driver shortages, or other problems. The driver in charge of his own vehicle is to a much greater extent in charge of his own destiny and is not dependent on the services of others. This is why more and more people want to use their private car for travelling to work.
I do not condone this. The whole debate has been an attempt to dissuade people from wanting to do so. There is now some 12½ million cars on the road and it is wise to take note of the fad that there is a growing dependence on the motor car. The alternative to the private transport vehicle presents a challenge, which this report goes some way to help meet.
The private car may well be taken for granted by those who have had a car all of their lives—too much so. To others, who have just become car-owners, the motor car opens up new horizons and new forms of liberation. On the other hand, the wise motorist and to a large extent the motoring organisations must accept that there will have to be checks, restraints and limitations in our towns and cities.
These must be designed so that motorist does not hinder motorist, and motorist does not hinder road haulier, and above all, so that neither the haulier nor the motorist erodes more than is necessary the environment of those who live in our towns and cities. Traffic jams in London are not, fortunately, on the scale of those that occur in the United States, where huge urban programmes have been embarked upon. I have seen some of these.
In Tokyo the problems are catastrophic compared to those which face this country, because until recently environmental considerations have been given a very low priority. There are two main recommendations—first, limiting of the use of private cars at peak hours, and, secondly, ensuring that public transport can provide an attractive alternative. These are short-term issues to which the Government should give absolute priority.
Of course, there should be restraints on the private motorists, such as realistic parking charges, tighter parking controls and owner liability, as well as driver liability for parking offences. I would suggest that when excluding small towns and dealing with middle-sized towns and cities there is, however, a need to consider the professional man, who regards the car not only as a means of getting to work but as part of the work function. For many the journey to and from work is part of the weekly work pattern. These people form 10 per cent. to 15 per cent.
of the total, but they are an important factor. The journey to work is only one of the journeys that have to be undertaken.
In this context I am mindful of the fact that in our factories today, particularly where there is full employment, the employer who provides a car park for his workers is morely likely to retain and attract his work force. This is the reality which those in industry must face. The other reality is that at rush hours it is sometimes more comfortable to drive in one's car than to rely on the railway or the bus, when queueing and delays are only too frequent. The improvement of public transport at peak hours only is a costly use of resources, and much more attention must be given to the staggering of working hours.
Another point to be borne in mind is that in our modern towns invariably a journey is from home away from the city centre to a place of work away from the city centre. In the new towns it can be round or across but not through a city centre. When dealing with city centres, adequate peripheral roads may well overcome some of the difficulties. In Sheffield many people commute from the west end, namely, my constituency of Hallam, to the east end—Attercliffe and elsewhere. Lack of alternative roads can force far too many to go through the city centre.
Twice, in the last 12 months I have had the opportunity of seeing the Boulevard Périphérique in action This is the main ring road round Paris. Unfortunately, too much traffic from the north, east and west of France is directed through the city to the rest of the country and the south. On the other hand, those Members of Parliament and planners who have studied this recently have found that about 85 per cent. of those using this road comprise people going from one suburb to the Périphérique and coming back in again. This is a means of getting from one side to the other of Paris without going through the city centre.
But when I travelled through Paris on Friday, when most of its inhabitants were going to the south at the start of the long holiday I can assure hon. Members that the traffic congestion there would have pleased no one had it taken place in London. Nevertheless, I hope that


the GLC will not reject the box and other means of providing quick transport by road from one part of London to another, for in cities such as London and Paris a very high percentage of all journeys are within the city boundaries. This is nothing to do with the motorway ring roads which are also proposed.
It is wise for us to make comparisons with other countries. Those who have discussed these matters with the Commission in Brussels—I see my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton. Test (Mr. S. James A. Hill) present and I will be asking him to table Questions about this—realise that much information has been collated about habits in other countries. This country has more cars per mile of road than any other country in Europe. In many European countries the average family spends more on a car than a roof over its head. I have tabled a Parliamentary Question this week to ask the Secretary of State what the position is in this country. Only last week the Council of Europe Economic Affairs and Development Committee debated this very subject. Europeans will benefit from this debate and the reports.
If I have a criticism, it is that not enough attention has been paid to the collection and delivery of goods in medium-sized towns and cities. There is a circular in the evidence—M14—on page 99 of the supplementary memorandum. However, it must be borne in mind that for practical purposes all goods in urban areas must be collected or delivered by road. Such deliveries or collections could be by van, light lorry, furniture van or pantechnicon.
In the past 25 years there have been immense new developments in our city centres. Have the planners made enough provision for loading and off-loading when planning permission for new construction has been given? There are immediate alternatives: restricting times for loading and unloading. However, that is inconvenient to those in business. Are commercial premises with good facilities for loading and unloading subject to an increase rather than a decrease in rates? This is equally anomalous for the private citizen who provides a garage to keep his car off the highway. He finds that his rates go up accordingly. These matters

have not been dealt with in enough depth.
There has been a good discussion on the rôle of local government. I will not elaborate on that now. However, the dialogue between my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe in the debate provides valuable clarification.
I welcome the fact that the Department is now sharing in a transportation study for Sheffield and Rotherham. This has created a good deal of interest and enthusiasm. When will this study be completed? Will it be published?
I welcome the fact that various mass and personal transport systems are being reviewed. But this study for Sheffield and Rotherham will provide an example of what other towns and cities have to consider and face.
It is easy for local authorities to be too restrictive on the private motor car by preventing parking too far away from city centres. What are reasonable criteria for a local authority to decide when to prevent parking altogether? Do local authorities give enough attention to loading and off-loading at commercial premises and shops?
There is a proposal in Sheffield to increase the pedestrian precinct as such. At what stage does the pedestrian precinct become too large?
There has been reference to free bus rides. I understand that this is one of the items being considered by the Sheffield City Council. It will note that the experiment in Rome has been a failure. Surely, park-and-ride on a free basis has some virtues. The most important point is that where buses are coming into cities from outside and have to go through heavily congested urban areas there should be priority lanes. I welcome the fact that instruction and films are to be given and shown to the planning departments of local authorities.
I should like to end with two brief points. The first deals with the alternatives to the motor car—mass transport systems and personal rapid transport systems. Obviously the bus is the best short-term measure to anything else which can be devised. London benefits from the underground, and we have had an outline of the Newcastle proposal which is going


forward. The fast underground has many virtues. When I visited TRANSPO 72 the London Transport Underground map was on view. Few Americans realised that we have had the Underground system for decades. They thought that it was a useful plan for the future. In other words, what we in London have done and are doing we tend to ignore and take for granted. The emphasis on the need to provide special routes for buses, coupled with the fact that streetcars are prevalent in Europe, could mean that the tram, which was abandoned a decade or so ago, could come hack into its own. This is a form of mass transport, although I am not too keen on the steel wheel on rail. However, other sophisticated systems were on show at TRANSPO 72, and are now the subject of state sponsored trials and experiments in the USA.
Personal rapid transport systems were also on show. If a person owns a car he is responsible for any damage that he does to it and has to have it repaired. When a person hires a car the same applies. Those who install personal rapid transport systems for men or men's immediate friends, and even family, catering for two, four or even six people, may not have means of checking whether there has been vandalism of one type or another. Personal transportation. without responsibility for the transport vehicle on the part of the person using it, could give rise to opportunities for vandalism.
Secondly, there is a need to know more about the availability of liquid fossil fuels for propelling the motor vehicle as such. I should welcome a debate and more information on the energy situation. The provision of alternative means of transport to the private car or lorry which is as economical may be difficult but is a matter which must be looked into urgently and in depth in this context.
The urban transport problems present a challenge to this country and to other countries. I accept that there must be encouragement of public transport systems and I welcome the recommendation in the report. I accept that the motorist, particularly at peak hours, whether it be a private motorist or a road haulier, in both environmental and his own interests, must accept restrictions. Town planning standards to accommodate private motor-

ists and the heavy commercial vehicles need revising and should be looked at much more closely in future.
I welcome this report and congratulate its authors on presenting the House with a useful working document.

6.3 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Palmer: I serve with the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. J. H. Osborn) on another Select Committee. I hope that on this occasion he will forgive me if I do not follow him but leave Sheffield and proceed immediately to Bristol.
I represent the Central division of Bristol. The curious point about my constituency is that in spite of its name and location it is to be bisected by the new Bristol outer circuit road. That road has not perhaps achieved the national notoriety of the London motorway box scheme, but I assure the House that it is highly controversial in Bristol.
The road was conceived in the early 1960s on Buchanan lines, although I understand that Buchanan has since repented, and is the outer of two concentric circles which are proposed to be driven through and around the ancient city of Bristol taking up land made available by old housing clearance. The original intention was that the road should use flyovers and tunnels where necessary. Some of these have been abandoned on grounds of expense and amenity, which has meant that we have been left with complicated intersections.
A decade has passed since the plan was originally conceived, and a number of important facts are emerging which I propose to give to the House in order to assist the debate. I can give them because, as the Member for the Central constituency, I can claim to have been a close observer of the scene throughout.
The first point to bear in mind is that while this road is still being doggedly pushed on—stage I will soon be completed and stages 2 and 3 are in the process of receiving grants—it is already evident that it will do very little to relieve the fundamental traffic congestion difficulties of Bristol, and there are two principal reasons for that.
First, in the 10 years since the plan was originally produced, traffic—and particularly car traffic—has increased


enormously. Bristol is an area of outstanding growth in terms of cars. Secondly, since the plan was drawn up the national motorway system has been developed. There is a link from the M4 through the M32, which is the Park Way, from the new motorway right on to the outer circuit road of Bristol, and when this new road is eventually given an outlet to the south, instead of relieving congestion it will attract traffic through the heart of Bristol from the motorway to other national routes. It is no good planning city road schemes without making them an integral related part of the national road plan or the worst will result.
So far, the road has gone through areas which were perhaps destined for ultimate demolition. The houses affected were old, though some of them could probably have been reconstructed and saved. But the general social effect has been unfortunate. It has almost entirely broken up the social cohesion of my constituency. It has even affected the routes by which children have to go to school; communities which grew up and evolved together have been divided. It has given the city's housing department extra problems—as if it did not have enough already—and, most regrettable of all, in a historical sense, it is changing the character of Bristol and will in the long run make Bristol indistinguishable from any city anywhere in western Europe. It has aroused much public resentment. It has divided the political parties. It has inspired a satirical review at Bristol's famous theatre.
There was a time when objections could have been lodged to the scheme but the known fact is that there are always few objectors at the time when a scheme starts. The objectors come forward when the actual road construction starts and people see what is happening. As the Member for the area most affected, I must tell the House that there have been innumerable objections not only from those whose houses have been pulled down to allow the road to go through but from those who live on the edge of the route, because they have to endure months and sometimes years of inconvenience, dirt and noise. They are often elderly people, and they grow weary with having to cope with the difficulties of life in such conditions.
Although it is not often said, the truth is that when a large modern contracting firm moves into an area it is rather like the coming in of an occupying army. The firm uses bulldozers and mechanical shovels instead of guns and tanks, but my constituents often feel like the citizens of an occupied country.
The question that needs to be answered is whether the orbital road solution for dealing with traffic problems in Bristol has been worth it. In the light of experience, I think my answer must be a qualified "No". I do not blame those who inaugurated the scheme. Some of them are my close political friends, and they certainly received the best technical advice. That is one of the difficulties about this kind of scheme. The elected representative is so much in the hands of the expert; experts become determined to carry their schemes through irrespective of any change of personalities or of political majorities.
I have no bias against the car. In fact, for two or three years I was a member of the Committee of that august body the Royal Automobile Club. I am not sure why I left the Committee but I think it was because it kept issuing those blue posters. I am no enemy of the car. I regard it as a great emancipator of the human race, but the more cars there are the more it is necessary to control them in the interests of humanity packed in an urban environment.
For that reason I welcome the report of the Expenditure Committee. I welcome, too, the Government's reaction to it, which I confess is on balance constructive. The combination of the report and the White Paper provides some enlightenment, but the difficulty is that a considerable period of time will elapse between the issuing of the White Paper and the bringing in of the necessary legislation. Meanwhile, these schemes grind remorselessly on and a vast vested interest has grown up in city planning technical departments and in construction firms. It is an alliance that will not easily be broken.
I have one specific point to put to the Government. I do not know whether the Minister will reply to it tonight. I do not particularly want to encourage him to do so, and perhaps he will let me have the answer by letter. On page 10 of the


White Paper the Government reply to Recommendation 29, which says:
The proportion of existing schemes considered as firm commitments, both highway and public transport, should be kept to an absolute minimum when considering new plans.
The White Paper says:
The Government agree. Inclusion of a scheme in the preparation list which is periodically announced by the Secretary of State is not a firm commitment without further adequate appraisal and evaluation of the scheme itself, its wider implications and a comparison with alternative proposals.
I take that paragraph to mean that even long-planned schemes can be revised and that the Government will take the initiative in bringing about a revision. The answer to my question will be of special interest to those in Bristol, on both sides of the controversy, who are concerned with further development of the outer circuit road. I should like to know whether the Government regard the completion of the outer circuit road in Bristol—under grant—to the Totter-down intersection as conflicting with that paragraph in the White Paper. Has the Minister's Department studied the White Paper? It is no good having Select Committees as industrious as this Select Committee has been. White Papers which are welcoming and helpful and encouraging ministerial speeches if in the end there is very little change and the people in our great cities are left to live in an environment that steadily worsens because we are not strong enough to control it.

6.15 p.m.

Mr. Sydney Chapman: As an environmentalist who, I suppose, was an environmentalist before the word was invented if only because I am that unpopular combination, city politician, town planner and private architect, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate on urban transport planning. With the greatest respect, the House must face certain basic facts.
First, whereas 20 to 25 years ago on average one in every five families had a private vehicle, today on average every other family has its own means of private conveyance. The problem of urban areas with which the debate is primarily concerned is caused not only by that fact but by the fact that 80 per cent. of us

live in towns and cities and that many who do not live in towns and cities come to those urban areas to seek their living. Whereas in the United Kingdom on average the density of population is just over 600 people to every square mile, in the urban areas on average the density is between 8,000 to 12,000 people to every square mile.
Because the number of private vehicles is increasing, fewer and fewer people are using public transport or, to be more precise, people are using public transport fewer and fewer times. Notwithstanding the Government's obligation to provide a service to those without private means of transport, public transport cannot successfully compete with the private car unless negative policies detrimental to the car owner are introduced by the Government.
The reason why public transport cannot compete with private transport is in general terms that private transport takes a person from door to door and—a fact that is overlooked by many people, certainly by economists and town planners—the motorist, having involved himself in probably the second highest financial transaction of his life, second only to buying his own home, has to use his car to justify the outlay of that capital expenditure. We can never solve the problem of traffic in town by positive solutions. Even if we had unlimited resources we could never provide the roads needed for an increasingly affluent society.
I apologise for descending to parochial matters, but the classic example of that is Birmingham. I suppose that Birmingham has an adequate inner ring road system. It is physically joined to the national network motorway system, of which Birmingham is the hub. The very fact that Birmingham has an adequate inner ring road system will make it the first city to have an out-of-date inner ring road system. An adequate road system acts as a magnet and increases the volume of private and commercial vehicles.
If we reject the absolute negative solution to the problem of traffic in towns, as I am sure we shall—if we do not do so in the debate today we shall certainly do so to our constitutents before the next General Election—the solution of putting the motor car out of reach of the average family man by such means as


increasing the car tax to 100 per cent., the petrol tax to 1,000 per cent., and the Road Fund licence from £25 to £100, we must be concerned about the degree to which as a democratic society we are prepared to inflict negative policies on the private motorist. We may think that a combination of negative policies is necessary, and I want to sketch out two or three.
First, for the sake of civilisation and the environment we must have an extension of the use of pedestrian precincts. There are difficulties involved in the timing of the loading and unloading of goods for shops in those areas and problems with ambulances, fire engines and police cars, but I say to traders who bitterly complain when yellow lines are painted outside the front doors of their shops that it can be shown that trade increases when shops are in desirable areas in which people can walk about without fear of being hit up the backside by half a ton of metal. We can re-create pleasant areas in our cities by extending the "pedestrian only" concept.
Secondly, there must be an extension of the concept of using roads and streets in cities only for certain types of vehicle. I am a supporter and sponsor of the Heavy Commercial Vehicles Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes). To put it generally and a little simply, the Bill seeks to give local authorities powers to control where large vehicles can go in urban areas. But there should be an obverse side to this coin. We must deny to private motorists the use of certain streets and we must perhaps give preference to heavy vehicles in certain streets. There must be a comprehensive policy and an extension of the concept of limiting the type of vehicle that can use certain types of road.
Thirdly, whilst I absolutely agree that there should be an extension of the experimental bus lane system, there might also be roads specifically for use only by public transport vehicles whether they are buses, coaches or taxis.
Recommendation 12 deals with car parking charges. Yes, of course, the charges must be steep in city centres but they should also be cheap, if not free, on the periphery of city centres next to good communications, bus stops and so on. There must be a carrot as well as a stick in the policy.
Meter feeding is referred to in Recommendation 17. If we are to have meters, I sometimes think we should encourage people to feed meters. Congestion in cities is partly caused by motorists every one, two, or four hours having to drive round looking for unoccupied meters. I would get rid of metering and institute the double yellow line, and there is certainly a case for steeper fines for parking on double yellow lines on clearways into city centres. Just as the strength of the chain is in its weakest link, so traffic flows into cities at peak times are utterly frustrated and ruined by the odd van, wagon or car which is parked on the inside lane.
In conclusion, whilst national Government must set the framework for these negative policies that must inevitably be introduced to a certain degree in our transport planning policies, because every city and town has its own peculiar and particular problems powers should be available to the new local authorities—which in many cases are larger local authorities than the existing ones—to exercise at their discretion. The job of the House and of the Government, of whatever political complexion, is to see that local authorities have powers to act as they see fit in what is, after all, an increasing crisis, and the enabling legislation so to do.

6.25 p.m.

Mr. Peter Doig: Unlike nearly all previous speakers in the debate, I do not welcome the Committee's proposals, nor the Government's suggestions about them. We have to face facts, and the facts are as follows. Of the population of Britain, 80 per cent. live in urban areas. Of the households in this country, 60 per cent. have one or more cars. This proportion is constantly increasing. It will continue to increase, if one is to believe all the information that we have.
Whether or not we like it, people like using their cars. They will continue to use them so long as that is the best form of transport available to them. For example, the average family likes to shop with its car. Can hon. Members visualise the conditions which would exist upon a bus if one banned cars from central London and everyone had huge shopping baskets and all of them tried to crush into an already overcrowded bus? Can one


imagine even the conductor trying to get along the bus to collect fares?

Sir John Hall: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will not lose sight of the fact that the Expenditure Committee's report pays particular attention to peak journeys, the journeys to and from work. It was not concerned with banning cars during the day, when people may wish to shop.

Mr. Doig: Mr. Doig That may be so, but that is not what is said in the report.

If people want to travel to work by car in preference to using a public service vehicle, why should they not be entitled to do that? First, what are the prime considerations? The first is time, and the second is cost. If people find from experience that it is cheaper and quicker to use their car than to use public transport, have we any right to say that they cannot make that choice? We may reach a situation where it becomes no longer cheaper or quicker for people to use their cars, and then a great many will stop using their cars. If we merely want to stop commuters and all-day parkers, who drive into the towns in the morning, leave their cars there all day and drive out again in the evening, whose employers are not providing them with parking space and who are parking on the streets—usually the biggest portion of parking—I am all for driving such people off the roads.

In my constituency, however all the modern towns have provided fairly adequate parking space for employees. I do not see why these people should be barred from bringing in their cars when they are not occupying space which would be used by anyone else. There would be no reason for doing that. They are perpectly entitled to use the space if they find that travelling by car is quicker and cheaper and their employers are prepared to provide parking space.

Other drivers should have parking facilities for a sufficient time to allow them to do a reasonable degree of shopping. In Scotland certain places allow only 10 minutes' parking. That is so in the centre of Stirling. Who could even dash into a shop, get served and get back to his car without risking a fine in 10 minutes? That is a ridiculously short period. Kirkcaldy allows 20 minutes,

which is a little better. One could manage to buy one item and get back to one's car in that time. Other areas, such as my own city, normally allow 45 minutes. That is a reasonable time for a person to do a little shopping and get back to his car.

So long as people want to use their cars for this purpose, we have no right to stop them. If problems arise, the people best qualified to deal with them are the local authorities. They know far better than any Committee of the House of Commons because they are on the spot and in constant touch with the people. They know the best solutions, and we ought to leave it to them to make decisions.

The banning of cars has been tried previously in certain areas of Scotland. One of the most profitable and desirable shopping streets in Glasgow, Sauchiehall Street, had a row of empty shops after a ban on cars, and that was in what was supposed to be the prime shopping area of Glasgow. The shops were no longer doing the trade because people found alternative ways of shopping with their cars, as they wished to shop.

One finds the same thing in Edinburgh, where there are parking meters throughout the centre of the city. Even if one is willing to pay the parking charge one can rarely find a space at a meter. This has happened to me time and again. The result is that a hypermarket is built on the outskirts of Edinburgh, providing ample parking space. People can do all their shopping there. They can even wheel their trolleys from the store to their cars. The store is now doing a tremendous trade. This is only the first sign of the pattern which is to come.

If we ban cars completely from the centres of cities, the businesses will move out of the cities. This applies particularly to retail businesses. They will move out as far as they have to move in order to provide what the people want, and that is facilities for shopping with their cars. This is already happening. Certain councils have tried to stop it, saying that there will be no hypermarkets in their areas. But they are being short-sighted because they are depriving themselves of one of their main sources of revenue. They are also taking away from their areas a great deal of prosperity and


spending power. That spending power will find an outlet. It does not matter whether councils say that hypermarkets cannot be built within the city boundary, or even under the new local authorities, which are much wider, in those bigger areas. People will find a site just outside and start one of these hypermarkets, and the city will suffer. If cities have any sense they will allow this type of development within the city. It would retain revenue and give people the facilities that they want.

However theoretical any Government or Committee may be in their approach, ultimately if we are legislating to prevent the vast majority of people from doing what they want to do a Government will not stay in power for very long.

We created a great deal of this trouble in our previous planning. We divided cities into residential, industrial and commercial areas. We deliberately started to separate people and houses from jobs. We compelled people to travel where they did not have to travel previously, when they were within walking distance. This problem has worsened. We in Parliament have caused a great deal of the problem. We have brought about traffic problems in almost every city.

The Government say that congestion is spreading. That is true. But let us look briefly at what has happened with the motorways. We used to have congestion on the main roads. The journey from Scotland to London used to take about 16 hours. Every little village provided a hold-up by way of a bottleneck, and every town was worse. So we built the motorways and we can now do that journey in half the time. Some of my friends can do it in less than half the time. They tell me they can get from Glasgow to London in six hours on the motorways. When the motorways were planned it was said that it was a colossal waste of money—£1 million a mile. The idea of bypassing every town and village between London and Scotland was thought to be fantastic.

We have not only cut down the time for holiday makers. We have also reduced transport costs and made Scotland fairly economic once more. The one thing we could not do before motorways was compete on equal terms with the south. Now that we have cut the journey time and cheapened transport costs on

articles we are again beginning to compete. If the Government give us a little more help, we shall compete successfully.

What has happened on the motorways can happen equally in cities. Every time one reaches a crossroads in cities one is held up, whether by a policeman, by a traffic warden, or by traffic lights. All sorts of expedients are devised to overcome this. The simple and obvious one used on the motorways is used rarely in cities. With flyover or underpass there is no hold-up. There can be two main flows of traffic.

To take a further example, many of the people living in Scotland want to holiday in Brighton, Eastbourne or other places on the South Coast of England. I know of no main road that bypasses London. I have not seen one on a map. If I want to get to any South Coast town I must lose a couple of hours going through London.

There has been talk about lanes reserved for buses. There is one in Park Lane. Have hon. Members looked at it? I have often travelled down it. A bus can hardly get in that lane for cars, lorries, vans, taxis—all sorts of vehicles except buses.

What proportion of the under-strength police force can we afford to devote to solving the traffic problem?

One of the reports suggests the imposition of large fines. Already somebody convicted of a parking offence has suffered a greater penalty than someone convicted of an assault with violence. If the recommendations in the report to the effect that penalties should be even stiffer is accepted, presumably capital punishment will be now considered for parking offences.

The continued extension of parking meters and raising of meter fees, as one of the reports suggests, until the demand reduces is tantamount to saying that the millionaire can park for as long as he likes as often as he likes wherever he likes, but the person who is struggling to keep his car on the road will have even greater difficulty.

Then the suggestion is made that parking should be handed over to private car parking firms. We know the fees they charge—even higher than parking meter fees. That is back to rationing by purse again.

Road pricing is suggested. Then—even worse—it is suggested that disc parking should be extended. Disc parking has always puzzled me. I am still awaiting answers to Questions I have asked as to who gets the revenue from the disc parking fees. If the parking places were set aside for people with special need such as doctors or nurses near hospitals, nobody would object. Is that the case? As far as I can discover, it is not. A person who can afford to buy is all right; he is guaranteed a place and he can park. Others must struggle along for themselves.

The Government must wake up to the fact that the vast majority of people want to use their cars. If we can find ways of letting them do so with the least inconvenience to others, we shall have solved the problem in a way acceptable to the public.

6.40 p.m.

Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson (Waltham-stow, East): I find myself curiously in agreement with a number of things that the hon. Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Doig) said. He is right to ask: why should we prevent people from using their cars? On the other hand, I do not think any of us would want to see a British city given over to the use of the car as Los Angeles is. It therefore comes down to a question of balance.
Generally, I can give the report only a mixed welcome, first because it tried to perform a task beyond its reach, which was to talk about urban transport planning in all our cities, whereas nearly all those cities have separate transport problems. Then, for a strange reason which I cannot understand but which perhaps a member of the Expenditure Committee will explain to me, the report left out any serious reference to underground trains as if they were peculiar to London, Glasgow and conceivably Newcastle. This is extraordinary for, after all, London's Tube plays perhaps the biggest part in moving the population to and from work.

Mr. John Horam: We did not leave out that reference. We went into the matter carefully and discussed at length the infrastructure and investment involved in installing a large underground or overground railway sys

tern and balanced this against improving the bus system. One of our major recommendations fairly early on goes into the whole question of how much investment should be put into this kind of public transport.

Mr. McNair-Wilson: I am grateful for that intervention. I should be even more grateful if the hon. Gentleman could point out to me the recommendation in the report, because I have not seen it. I have seen a reference to rapid transit systems, but that seemed to refer to surface transport. It is not quite right to imply that surface transport and underground transport are basically the same. because clearly they are not.

Mr. Horam: I agree that we talk about rapid transit systems, but the one we had in mind, which was the one on Tyneside, goes both overground and underground: it bridges at certain points and tunnels at others. Equally, the London underground transport system is over-ground at some points and underground at others. We still discuss the central question of how much provision should be made.

Mr. McNair-Wilson: We must agree to differ about this, because I still do not think that the point was made.
I am surprised to find that the Chairman of London Transport was not among the witnesses who were called. He would have been a valuable witness because his views about underground trains and how many more passengers they can carry and our buses and how many more they can carry at peak hours—which is what we are worried about, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Sir John Hall) said—would have covered the crucial point of the report. Also, "peaking" does not seem to have had anything like sufficient consideration.
I am disappointed that the Government find so little to say in favour of the concept of staggering working hours. If one has been round the London Transport system, as I have, one finds that the point is made for two periods in the day there is an enormous rush of travellers and that for the rest of the day the system can carry as many people as one chooses to put on it simply because there are few people travelling. If we could level out the peaks we would


have a transport system that met all our needs. Whether or not we restrict road transport does not affect the issue because the problem with the transport system we have is meeting those two peak demands.
A question that has been widely discussed in this debate is how much restriction we should put on the private motor car. It is a matter of balance; of how much freedom any individual should have and to what extent society has a right to restrict that freedom. To suggest that public transport, at least in Greater London, could take up the slack if we stopped the use of the private motor car is not borne out by the facts. The GLC witness giving evidence to the committee said:
No one part of the system can meet all the needs",
and as a London Member I am not unnaturally concentrating my remarks on London.
Another point to be discussed is how much parked vehicles contribute to the congestion in our cities and whether we ought to be taking into account other considerations. The report does not seem to touch on this aspect. For instance, do we know what effect the timing of traffic lights has? Anyone who say the film "The Italian Job" and saw what could be done by damaging the computer controlling the lights will realise how quickly a traffic jam can be created if that is the aim. Do police-controlled crossings help? Filter lights speed up the traffic very considerably, but they still seem to be a rarity, with the result that one traffic stream is held up because it can rarely cross the road. That angle is not discussed. Nor is the question of just how much lorries slow up cars. In my personal experience I find that they are a prime contributor to traffic hold-ups.
The private car has the great merit of convenience. It is door-to-door travel, and rapid door-to-door travel, and as long as parking spaces can be found at the end of the journey the car is obviously very much more convenient then is public transport—so much so that it is difficult to believe that, of right, public transport can attract people out of their cars and into the buses or the Underground.
After all, getting to work generally means a walk either to the bus stop or to the station, waiting for a bus or train—I talk now of my own journey to my office—getting out of the train, say, at the other end, waiting for another bus and then another walk. On the other hand, a man who has driven to work and got out of his car at a parking space has had a more comfortable journey, and if the weather is wet he arrives at his work dry.
Therefore, while the car can get through—and it still can because the roads are not yet so congested as to prevent it—private car travel will be very attractive for some time to come. The point was made to the Committee by one of the witnesses, Mr. Hollings, who said
… before people consider the use of public transport they must perceive that there are deterrents or disadvantages to using the car".
In my view the most effective deterrent would be to increase the cost and the inconvenience of using the private car. The Committee argues rightly that the more parking spaces we create the more we encourage people to use their cars. The report is right to suggest that off-street parking should not be increased.
There is a lot to be said for increasing meter charges if for no other reason than that those charges seem to be about a quarter of what the motorist pays in any National Car Park in London. Why it should be, I do not know. This seems to be an opportunity for local authorities to make a lot of money very easily, but for some reason they prefer not to take it. Admittedly, in the car park the motorist generally gets cover for his vehicle and parking for three hours instead of two, but otherwise I see no merit in it. If meter charges were increased it would be a small disincentive, and, in addition, it would provide money for local authorities which might be used to improve the public transport system.
I agree that no more parking spaces should be made available as these encourage motorists to use their cars. But then people ask "What about the motorist who parks outside the meter space? Surely he should be penalised very severely". I wonder whether he should. If a motorist is lucky enough to find a space it may cost him 5p for an hour,


and I do not think that the fine for missing that space—which, after all, is just a fluke—should be anything so ridiculous as £50, as has been suggested. The fine should bear some relationship to what the cost would have been, and at present it is £2 or 40 times the meter charge. If we put up the meter charges the fine should go up in some sort of ratio to those charges.
The hon. Member for Dundee, West was quite right to say that, if anything, the bus lanes are used more by motorists than by buses because the motorists find that they carry slightly lighter traffic. I suspect that very few motorists realise that it is illegal to drive in these lanes when buses are not there. We therefore have to decide whether to make the lanes available for buses only, with a fine for misuse, or whether they are ineffective. Personally, I doubt whether they will be effective. With limited road space available, I find it difficult to believe that restricting the use of one piece of the road when there is heavy traffic about makes much sense. I would far rather see the lanes restricted to buses only when, say, a bus is coming to a bus stop. Otherwise I doubt their value.
I also wonder whether we are right to think of the traffic congestion caused by the motorist as being the reason for buses being so slow and timetables so poor. One can ask anyone who has lived in or near Chelsea during the last 50 years about the No. 11 bus and one will be told that the "tyranny of the No. 11 bus", as it was described in a newspaper article, has gone on year in year out unchecked. One waits 20 minutes, and five No. 11 buses arrive. One waits another 20 minutes, and another five arrive. The first two are full: the last three are empty. So the procession goes on. The people at London Transport have told me that they are introducing radio control in the cabs, and an incentive scheme under which the driver of the bus benefits according to the number of passengers he has on board. But the tryanny goes on.
When there is a vote in the House, and even if I have half an hoar to spare, I will not travel here by bus, even at night, because the risk of being late is so great. No one can tell me that at night it is traffic congestion that causes

the bus to be slow. It does not. There is something wrong with the staffing of the buses, there is something wrong with the attitude of the drivers, and there may well be something wrong with London Transport's whole approach to the system.
Before we tell motorists that they must use more buses, let us at least give them buses on which they can rely, buses which will be there when they want them instead of leaving them standing at the bus stop for 20 minutes wondering when the next bus will come and finally giving up in disgust and walking through the rain to the nearest tube station.

Mr. Leslie Huckfield: I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman is able to find five No. 11 buses all at once nowadays, because London Transport is currently short of about 4,000 driving staff, and about one in every eight buses is running on overtime.

Mr. McNair-Wilson: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman made that intervention. In fact, on the buses London Transport is 4,200 men short. That reinforces the point I am making. Leaving aside the history of the No. 11 bus—no one can argue that the No. 11 route has been short-staffed throughout the last 50 years, for, clearly, it has not—what is the use of saying that people should leave their cars and use the buses when there are not enough buses to do the job? I repeat: we must look at the staffing of our buses as a whole, and we must look at the pay of our bus crews, if we are to have the people we need. Until we have that side of it right, the rest is wishful thinking.
I come now to the question of staggered working hours, to which I alluded briefly a few minutes ago. The report goes to some trouble to argue the case for levelling out the two great peaks of movement in our cities. Whether the concept of rate rebates is the right way to persuade firms to change their hours of work, or whether we ought to look at the whole issue, as the committee did in 1958, with an entirely fresh approach, I do not know. But this I do know: there is no special reason why everyone should have to travel between 7 and 10 in the morning and between 4 and 6 in the evening, why Thursday should have to be the late shopping night in London, or why theatre


matinées should have to start at 2.30 in the afternoon.
I commend to the Secretary of State the words of the committee in 1958:
The Committee's experience suggests that difficulties are often more real in contemplation than in practice.
Let us, therefore, hope that the Secretary of State will consider whether the desires of London Transport and of British Rail have some force, and that more could be done to encourage firms, shops, offices and so on to stagger the hours at which their work people come and go, so as to broaden the period of load far more than has been done hitherto.
Finally, I take up the point raised by the hon. Member for Dundee, West. He was perfectly right to make it. If we could restore community existence to our suburbs, if we could have our industry and our offices there, the great inflow and outflow every day would not happen. Perhaps this is a task for the town planners, but I wish that we could get away from the centralisation which we now have in the middle of our cities and begin to spread the whole of our activities over a wider area.

6.58 p.m.

Mr. John Horam: As the first Member to be called on this side who was a member of the Committee which produced the report, I wish first to say something about the Committee itself. We were a fairly motley band, and in that sense, I suppose, we were probably a fairly representative cross-section of Members of Parliament, excluding the very extremes. We were rather different in our backgrounds and our experience. We represented different sorts of area, from the very urban, to the suburban, and to the very rural. Obviously, we were different in our political philosophies and, perhaps, in the prejudices—or lack of them—with which we approached our subject. Even where we were similar, the similarities were not, I think, such as would necessarily have made us a pushover for the sort of conclusions to which we came. For example, I think that seven out of the eight of us are regular drivers.
None the less, with but little disagreement we came firmly to one clear set of recommendations; namely, that more encouragement should be given to public

transport, that we should use the existing road space more sensibly, and that the Government should play a major part in bringing both those ends about.
Perhaps we came to those conclusions through the harmonious influence of our sweet natures—certainly, we were all very calm and rational beings on the Committee—and possibly it had something to do with the even-handed approach of our chairman, the hon. Member for Wycombe (Sir John Hall), who, I must say, was even-handed to an exemplary and at times, to a lay member of the Committee, a surprising degree.
More than anything else, however, the fruitful and harmonious conclusion to which the Committee came was, I believe, due to the fact that here were a group of people, however diverse their backgrounds and their prejudices, subjected to the facts of today's urban transport planning problems. I believe that any such group of people subjected to those facts over a long period would come inescapably to the same sort of broad conclusions to which we came. I venture to suggest even that my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Doig), who has voiced the only major dissentient thoughts during the debate, had he been a member of the Committee—perhaps, on reflection, it might not have been such a good idea if he had—would have been influenced to come to much the same conclusions. In passing, I should remind my hon. Friend that there was a Scottish voice on the Committee, our hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Shettleston (Sir M. Galpern), whom, no doubt, he reveres as we all do. My hon. Friend the Member for Shettleston agreed wholeheartedly with our conclusions and expressed no major dissentient thoughts. We certainly had a strong Scottish voice, and it, too, agreed.
We now have the Government's observations, and I suspect that the general agreement among members of the Committee to which I have referred may not wholly survive an examination of the Government's reply—we are, after all, political animals—though I must say that I agree with a good deal of what was said by the hon. Member for Wycombe.
I shall be critical of the Secretary of State's reply only in so far as, in my view, it does not measure up to the Committee's recommendations. I take it no further


than that. Indeed, the Government's reply could have been a good deal worse than it was. I did a small calculation, and I counted seven specific points on which they appear to agree with the Committee, although in some respects the action which they foresee following up that agreement is less than satisfactory, there were seven points on which they did not agree, and there were two on which they appear totally to have missed the point. That is not bad in sheer quantity. Unfortunately, the disagreements are of central importance, and I shall mention two in particular.
First, on the central issue of the Government's rôle in the business of urban transport planning we made our Recommendation No. 2 in these terms:
The Department of the Environment should have a positive policy for urban transport, laying down a broad approach which it should ensure that local authorities follow.
We put that recommendation as high as No. 2 in our priorities because we attached great importance to it, and we did that, I believe, for three reasons.
First, it is possible to have such a broad approach. This was the general feeling not only of the members of the Committee but of the vast majority of the witnesses who appeared before us. Second, the problems are substantial, and it was felt that, given the facts as they are, only the central Government could take the right approach and bring to bear the strong emphasis necessary.
Third, without that firm central direction, some local authorities would drag their feet. My hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West made this point. For all sorts of reasons—reasons of competition between one small area and another, one wanting not to put off traders and shoppers and so on—steps might not be taken which, if taken, would benefit both areas or, indeed, the country as a whole. In passing, I must say that there seem to be some pretty rum authorities in Scotland, to judge by the 10-minute parking rules which some have, which seem utterly illogical from every point of view. I agree with my hon. Friend about that.
There were, as I say, certain clear logical reasons which led us to the view that the Government should play a strong

rôle, but also, I believe, influencing us in that view, there was the underlying thought that the Department of the Environment displayed an extraordinarily passive attitude right from the beginning of our discussions. I particularly remember the collective sense of despair from early on when we realised that the Department of the Environment said that it thought it was up to the local authorities more or less to do their own thing and that it had no broad policy. We say on page 37 of the report that the Department, as far as we can see, has no broad policy. That is a staggering thing to say about a most important Department of Government, but we said it because we felt strongly about this point. The previous Secretary of State, after coming to our discussions at a late stage in our thinking, firmed this up and said in the course of evidence that he saw the Department acting as a sort of clearing house for ideas. We want far more than a clearing house for ideas; we want a Government Department which is seen clearly to be supporting a policy.
In his reply, as far as I can see, the Secretary of State has made no progress beyond his predecessor in this crucial point. The section dealing with the rôle of central Government is contained in paragraphs 10 to 13. On mature reflection, and I have read it several times upside down, this way and that to see whether there is anything significant in it, I conclude that it is a bundle of the most trite platitudes. It says, for example, that we should not be concerned with detail, and again the hon. Member for Wycombe devastatingly pointed out that we all agree on this but that the detail was not the important question. It said that the local authorities have greatly enhanced powers to deal with these problems. Again we accept this and agree with it, but, again, it is not the major point.
We want to know what the Government are doing about this and what broad policy they have. That was the major subject which the Committee addressed itself to. Only at the end of this section is there a limp statement that the Secretary of State hoped that in future local authorities would pay greater attention to helping public transport and restraining the car. Even the AA and the


RAC could agree with that without losing too much of their cool. The consequences of this abdication are clear. Many local authorities will do, and are doing, a good job, but many are not and many will push ahead with schemes which were thought up five or 10 years ago, based on thinking which we have shown to be increasingly out of date. These same schemes will influence the future of our cities for five, 10 or 15 years to come. They will set the pattern, and they are being implemented on obsolete thinking.
In trying to put a gloss on this part of the reply, the Secretary of State said that he agreed that he and the Department must have a strong rôle to play, but he went on to make the equally weak point that he hoped for much from the reorganisation of local government. We, too, hope for much from that, but there will still be bad local authorities which drag their feet. We are looking for strong central policy from him.
I shall now venture to make a political point in a debate which has been free of such points. The Government seem prepared to make a strong central stand on housing or education where local authorities can be put in a remarkable straitjacket, but in urban planning they have not thought fit to do anything of the sort, and that can only signify that they do not attach the same importance to urban transport planning as they do to the other subjects.
The second weakness is concerned with the critical recommendation No. 22 which says:
As an urgent priority, all trunk and principal schemes of urban road building which have not reached the exchange of contract stage should be re-examined ab initio.
The Government disagreed for two reasons. They said that to do so might merely defer the benefits that the schemes are designed to secure. That is a lot of nonsense because not proceeding with schemes would also defer the disadvantages which we have seen, and one has to look at the balance of advantage and disadvantage.
The Government say they are concerned that it would defer—
for example removal of traffic including heavy goods vehicles from streets where they have no place.

That is a good argument and it is the classic argument now being put forward about many urban road schemes. But only a few roads are truly diversionary in character anyway, the classic example being the bypass round a small village on a main trunk road. Many others are not diversionary in character and they do not take away traffic to that degree.
The argument about taking traffic out of residential and other environmentally sensitive areas is being used about many roads which were originally justified as being necessary to cope with extra car traffic, so that the argument has been changed, more often to seem more fashionable, but the road goes ahead none the less. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, Central (Mr. Palmer) said that many roads which are planned to divert traffic end up attracting it into the town centres like magnets. That was argued in the case of the London motorway box, and he referred to it in the case of the Bristol motorways. No doubt it could be argued in other cases too.
Even if it is held that the road would have some benefit in taking traffic out of environmentally important areas, account must still be taken the cost of building, the social upheaval which often flows from the building and all the other incidental effects of the project. All this must be weighed against the hypothetical advantage of diverting a certain amount of traffic from some small area. Very often in the past when putting forward proposals of this sort local authorities have not properly considered measures of restraint as opposed to physical road building as alternatives to deal with the traffic congestion. For all these reasons, therefore, the Committee was right to make this strong recommendation, and I am sorry that the Secretary of State has not found it possible to agree with it.
Some towns have stopped their roads more or less in their tracks. Munich was an example which we visited, where we talked to the authorities at great length. They showed no regret over their action, and London, Nottingham and other towns will not regret it either. Even though they may build roads subsequently, probably these roads will be better thought out and better able to tackle the real problems than roads carried through from previous schemes which the


authorities are now refusing to implement.
The real point is that since the war we have been following the traditional principles in transport policy of allowing relatively indiscriminate use of our roads and supplementing these with a relatively indiscriminate provision of road space. As more cars come on to the roads, we have been saying that on the whole more space must be provided for them. Now, for all sorts of reasons—social, aesthetic, amenity and cost—we can no longer work on that basis. We therefore have to use our existing road space in a far more selective and discriminating way, and we must justify far more additions to that road space. This will, unfortunately, mean rules—rules about heavy lorries, rules about cars, rules about buses.
Some will rightly argue that that involves a limitation of freedom, but it is one of the freedoms that are tending to diminish anyway as we try to cope with the problems of accommodating an ever-larger number of people at an ever-higher standard of living on a single planet. That is the central point about using our road space more economically and more sensibly which the Committee made.
I am very sorry that, although he has made several important concessions to it, and a number of other gestures, the Secretary of State has not satisfied members of his own party who served on the Committee and myself that he has made the right sort of bow to this policy.

7.16 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Jones (Northants, South): Those of us who served on the Expenditure Sub-Committee that produced the report must be pleased with the support that has been given to many of our conclusions and recommendations by the public at large and the media. I well recall the interview that our chairman. my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Sir John Hall) gave in New Palace Yard when the report was published, giving an excellent review of our proposals. I am also pleased that in general the recommendations have been accepted by the Government.
I agree with the hon. Member for Gateshead, West (Mr. Horam) that we were a very happy committee and en-

joyed the chairmanship of my hon. Friend. We had a purposeful inquiry and came usefully to some positive proposals.
The hon. Member for Gateshead, West has criticised some of the lukewarm acceptance of our recommendations. He is particularly critical of the fact that no mandatory provisions are proposed requiring local authorities to implement certain proposals that the report makes. But he will have listened with interest, as I did, to the various contributions by our colleagues.
I recall in particular what the hon. Member for Leicester, North-East (Mr. Bradley) said about what happened in Leicester, and how they were trailblazers there. The hon. Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, West (Mr. Robert C. Brown) made the same claim for Newcastle. There was a little bit of a split between them as the debate went on. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Mr. Sydney Chapman) told us that Birmingham had done things that should not have been done, and that they were creating problems in the city as a result. They were done in the early days of the major urban expressways, and we have learnt a lot since they were proposed and implemented. The hon. Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Doig) told us of the problems created in his city by urban planning of land use, with a view to trying to keep cars out of the centre of Dundee.
When I consider the conflicting aims and objectives that all cities have been reaching out for, I share the reservations of my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State, because we are in the early days of this great problem, and no solutions have stood the test of implementation to any great extent. The hesitations of many of us arise because there is not a scientific approach. We cannot gain much by precept and example. The conditions in every urban centre and city vary so much that what may suit one city may be quite inappropriate to another, and to call for mandatory arrangements across the country as a whole may well be impossible at any time. It certainly would be premature now. I share the view in favour of a careful approach to the problem.
I am sure that there is general recognition that in our cities there will be a permanent inadequacy of provision for


all road-users. Attention needs to be given to peak-hour commuter traffic and, in particular, to discouraging the use of the private car for regular daily journeys in built-up areas.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe rose when the hon. Member for Dundee, West talked about the problems in Dundee, because we in the Committee were addressing ourselves to the problems arising from peak-hour journeys to work, and to look at the whole problem, as many of those who contributed to today's debate have done, is to ignore that specific, central point.
None of the proposals is aimed to be detrimental to the car owner and driver. We are searching for circumstances in which public transport, at both ground level and below, is complementary to the use of the private car. We are seeking a happy combination of the two. We are at the early days of all this.
Those of us who had the opportunity to go to one or two Continental cities found that any schemes that had been provided had been of a very short duration. There was no long-term experience upon which to base any firm conclusions.
I very much agree with the hon. Member for Dundee, West that we must not sacrifice our city centres by excluding private cars. I am very much against the whole concept of hypermarkets, supermarkets and out-of-town shopping centres, because it will destroy the pattern of our city centres, as it has in America. We must look for a compromise solution. We must provide adequate off-street parking for shoppers in town and city centres. We and the retail trade must examine the problem presented to shoppers who have to get their bulk purchases of groceries, and so on, out of the shops and into their cars or some form of public transport.
The large multiple retailers advocate the development of out-of-town shopping centres, particularly for the bulk purchases of foodstuffs. It is said that a family needs about half a hundredweight of groceries a week, and we are asked, "How can they cope with that unless they can bring a car outside the door of the shop?" But there must be, and are, other ways in which we can ensure the financial viability of our towns and city centres and continue to use them as the tax base upon

which most of our local government services depend.

Mr. Doig: The hon. Gentleman has just spoken of a family needing half a hundredweight of groceries a week. Does he know that the British Road Federation says that the figure is 2 tons of goods per family per week?

Mr. Jones: I like to be modest. I cannot contradict the hon. Gentleman, but I wonder what the average family could possibly want with 2 tons. They do not buy a refrigerator or something like that every week. Perhaps the retailers hope they will. That figure is, perhaps, making a little too much of a real problem. Here again, we are looking for a harmonising of interests.
Peak-hour journeys to work lie at the root of the inquiry. I was interested to see my right hon. and learned Friend's comments on Recommendation 13, concerning the question whether there should be
Enabling legislation to permit all local authorities to license and thus to regulate the operation of off-street parking space open to public use.
The Greater London Council was given powers under paragraph 35 of Schedule 5 of the Transport (London) Act 1969, but I think that it found many problems associated with the idea. One problem is that private non-residential parking facilities represent over 50 per cent. of off-street parking places in London. That is nearly twice as much as public off-street parking. There are legal difficulties, and the compensation for the acquisition of private parking rights is something that we have not gone into yet with any great care. The GLC is proposing to introduce such a scheme in 1974. It will be wise to see how the GLC gets on with such a proposal before we try to implement it elsewhere.
My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, East (Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson) was critical on the one hand, but aware of the problems on the other. He was involved in a slight altercation about underground trains. The Committee thought about surface and underground transport. My hon. Friend mentioned the staggering of working hours. The Committee made a recommendation in that respect.
I agree with what my hon. Friend said about traffic management and London


transport. The use of planning must play an important rôle, and traffic problems must be given consideration at an early stage of planning and throughout schemes of development and redevelopment. There is a necessity for long-term objectives, and the great contribution that traffic management could make must not be overlooked.
I have read with interest the facts gathered together under the heading, "Personal Mobility and Transport Policy, Broadsheet 542 ", published by Political and Economic Planning. I find it difficult to agree with the suggestion which is there contained. It says that
mobility deprivation is as important as other well-recognised forms of deprivation such as are found in education, housing and employment.
There is some exaggeration in that comparison.
I hope that we shall not be making the mistake which we have made in the whole of the post-war period when dealing with housing by denying adequate resources. That has lain at the root of many of our housing problems and arises from policies followed by successive Governments since the war. Adequate transport resources can be ensured only by a proper combination of user and public fund contributions.
I am against concessionary fares and suggestions of reduced fare arrangements or free transport availability. That matter was referred to by the hon. Member for Leicester, North-East. Fare-paying arrangements have not received the attention that they require. I think in terms of simplified fare structures, coin-changing machines in buses and on the Underground system, and an arrangement of fare collection by way of sensitised tickets available for bulk purchase. We must seek ways and means by which we can ensure the extension of single-man buses with the minimum inconvenience to the driver and the travelling public. We should be looking towards a lowering of the labour content of our transport services.
When the Committee was in Hamburg it saw a system in which there was no collection of tickets at the exits of underground stations, and where, generally speaking, only one person was in charge of larger underground stations than ours,

I am a great advocate for the lowering of the labour content. One-man buses and a simplified fare structure could be a great contribution—

Dame Irene Ward: I do not accept what my hon. Friend has said about one-man buses. I am not in favour of them as they operate today.

Mr. Jones: I know my hon. Friend's views well in that regard. I know that she has problems in getting from her London residence to this place. I think that her experience generally arises from that.

Dame Irene Ward: It is nothing to do with that at all. I am not in favour of one-man buses after my experience of watching them operate in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. I do not think that such buses are fair on the public or the drivers. The drivers should not have to operate one-man buses. The public is not in favour of them. They are very inconvenient.

Mr. Jones: I can see that my advocacy for a simplified fare structure has not been at all persuasive.
The PEP Press release produced some significant figures on car availability. Perhaps the most striking feature is that four out of five people do not have the free use of a car and less than half the adult population are licence holders. Clearly, in any policy we must be thinking carefully of children, housewives, the elderly, the infirm and the disabled. We must ensure that public services, both road and rail, key in to car parking provision. Already over the past 10 years many opportunities have been missed to use the surplus land at many British Rail stations through which commuter traffic passes.
We should be making much better use of the park-and-ride system. That applies particularly to commuters travelling into London. We could have much more effective car park provision at stations, with a resultant lessening of the number of cars flowing in and out of London morning and afternoon.
I welcome the current climate of opinion among those who have responsibility for public transport and traffic management. I am confident that a new approach will be acceptable in public


terms and will lead to a significant improvement of our environment, if carried out with sensitivity and determination.

7.29 p.m.

Mr. Leslie Huckfield: I hope that the hon. Member for Northants, South (Mr. Arthur Jones) will forgive me if I do not take up entirely his comments. I wish to be as brief as possible. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Acton (Mr. Spearing) wishes to speak and that my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench must be champing at the bit to raise an entirely different matter.
I wonder how many hon. Members who have advocated the increased use of public transport at this moment have their cars parked outside. When the hon. Member for Walthamstow, East (Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Doig) referred to the convenience of the private car they were right. In many cases, as the hon. Member for Waltham-stow, East says, London transport is at the moment rather difficult. The real trouble comes if we take what the hon. Gentleman and what my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West said to a logical conclusion. If we all start to use our cars, as many people have been doing, in our large cities the situation will be far worse than they have portrayed from London Transport's point of view. Indeed, the situation will be far worse than any hon. Member has portrayed.
I think that some hon. Members have seen the point at Los Angeles where four freeways meet. It is called the "Stack ". It becomes in the morning and evening rush hours the most gigantic parking lot in the world. To carry the car and freeway to its logical conclusion is not the answer.

Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson: Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson rose—

Mr. Huckfield: However, local authorities are now moving in the direction of the Select Committee's report. It might almost be concluded that the report, if it has not become the manifesto of the right hon. and learned Gentleman, has become the manifesto of cities such as Nottingham. The report has now even become the policy of Birmingham. Although the Birmingham inner ring road scheme and the connection with the expressway are complete, Birmingham is now seri-

ously re-examining all further major road schemes.
The climate has changed. The report issued by London Transport this afternoon shows that pedestrians and the other people using the Oxford Street area have possibly benefited to the tune of £250,000. London Transport revenue has increased by £77,000 since the Oxford Street experiment started. That, in money terms, is a quantifiable testimony to the significance and correctness of the Committee's report. I have not seen any empty shops in Oxford Street simply because we banned cars from Oxford Street.

Mr. McNair-Wilson: It is one thing to say that we should have fewer cars in the centres of cities and another thing to say that public transport can meet the need which would be created. My point was that our public transport system is inadequate to meet it.

Mr. Huckfield: I fancy that what the hon. Gentleman is saying is that it is all right for everybody else to go by bus but not for him.
One of the most significant points which emerged from the evidence presented to the Committee was in the evidence presented by Christopher Foster, head of the urban school at the London School of Economics, who said that under the Department's present grant structure public transport improvements were often the most expensive option. He analysed the options open to local authorities, pointing out, for example, that an urban motorway scheme might cost £100 million but that the local authority would get a 75 per cent. capital grant for it. Therefore allowing £25 million for capital costs and perhaps about £20 million for current and maintenance costs, a motorway scheme might cost the local authority only £45 million. But, under the Department's present grant structure, because the grants for rapid transit schemes are not so high, the construction of a rapid transit scheme could cost £65 million.
If the local authority wanted to improve surface transport that would be most expensive of all. If it wanted to put more buses on the road, or to improve the headway or frequency of its schedules, such a proposal, because of the grant structure, could cost the authority £87 million.
The figures may not be exact, but they prove that under the Department's present grant structure it is often much cheaper for a local authority to go ahead with an urban motorway scheme. That is why I am glad that it has been said in the Department's response to the report that the grant scheme will be overhauled. I hope that that overhaul will be done in such a way that much more freedom is given to local authorities to choose between a motorway scheme and a public transport scheme, and that will, I hope, enable local authorities to put much more emphasis on public transport.
Under the Bill piloted through the House by the hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes), it will be possible for local authorities—indeed, they will have an instruction to do this—to draw up overall transport plans. They will have to decide on lorry routes and on public transport emphasis. The only thing which will enable a local authority to draw up an overall plan by 1977, as it will be required to do under the Bill, is to give it an overall grant and allow it to decide how to spend it. As long as the Ministry gives a high percentage grant for road building, it will be attractive to local authorities, like my hon. Friend mentioned at Bristol, to go in for road building.
The Department has been surprisingly reticent about the experiments which it has sponsored. What about the Stevenage super-bus experiment, which showed that only an 8 per cent. switch from car to bus transport could save about £9 million out of a total of £51 million invested in the scheme? What about the success of the Reading scheme, where the introduction of bus-only lanes—contra-flow so that there are no enforcement problems—has shown that route times can be reduced by four-and-a-half minutes, that other journey times can be reduced by 37 per cent., that town centre accidents can be reduced by 29 per cent., and that the noise on bus only routes is reduced from from 82 to 68 decibels?
I should have thought that that was the kind of thing in which the Department must taken an interest and which it should publicise to other local authorities. What about the point made in the analysis of the Prices and Incomes

Board of the case for higher London Transport fares in May 1969? Appendix 3 states:
Each passenger who shifts from peak hour travelling by bus to peak hour travelling by car gives a net addition to costs from the point of view of the community as a whole of 59·2p per mile.
In other words, everyone who shifted from the bus to the, car then cost the community as a whole five shillings and now probably would cost the community about 50p per person per mile. That is a significant cost to put on the community when a passenger chooses to use his car rather than the bus.
I cannot understand why the Department is not publishing more information of that sort, particularly when often it is its own researches and sponsorships which reveal much of it. Why is not the Department examining much more closely the case for fare-free transport? I know that my lion. Friend the Member for Leicester, North-East (Mr. Bradley) and I, from a trade union point of view, differ slightly on this matter, but it has already been calculated that a fare-free transport system in the Merseyside Passenger Transport Authority area would cost £25 million and in the West Midlands Passenger Transport Authority area £34 million.
It is not sufficient to say that the Rome experiment did not work, particularly as it was conducted over four days in the middle of a public holiday. What about the Stockholm experiment, with monthly and annual season tickets? The Stockholm and Hamburg schemes have shown that greater facilities for public transport interchange in conjunction with much stricter control of parking and bus-only lane schemes and other improvements are the way to retain passengers and to increase their number.
I come to the main point of my speech. Hon. Members on both sides have completely neglected the fact that one of the main drawbacks of public transport is that the staff cannot be obtained. The establishment figure of London Transport is about 7,000 down. It has a shortage of about 4,000 driving staff and 1,700 drivers. It has a staff turnover of about 150 every month. The Underground schedules in London are 7½ per cent. down because of a shortage of 130 drivers. This illustrates the seriousness of the staffing problem.
The union to which I belong, the Transport and General Workers' Union, recently put forward proposals for a busman's charter. The Minister must start taking proposals like this seriously if we are to obtain the staff needed on public transport. It is a difficult job, involving a seven-day week, often almost a 24-hour or 18-hour day. Those of us who come from transport families appreciate what that means to family life. The Department must think seriously about introducing the principle of the 35-hour week and the seven-hour day in order to obtain public transport staff. It must think about better sick pay, better holidays and better pension schemes. A few fare-free transport experiments would enhance the driver's job and the enjoyment of being a bus driver, because when one is stuck in a bus in Regent Street during the rush hour it cannot be much of a job.
Wages must be increased, but let the Department bear in mind that as the size of heavy goods vehicles increases, enabling road hauliers to achieve greater productivity and greater profitability, the road haulage employers are enabled to pay drivers more. Because there is an acute shortage of heavy goods vehicle drivers, who are being exploited by the private employment agencies, there is a tendency for PSV drivers to shift into the heavy goods vehicle sector, thus making the shortage even more acute. The hauliers have much greater potential to pay higher wages. Therefore, those on the passenger transport side must seriously consider increasing wages and fringe benefits, because the staffing situation is serious.
One in eight of London's buses is being operated only because of overtime. The staff shortage is masked by the fact that London Transport has many buses which it wishes to put on the roads but cannot keep them adequately maintained because of a shortage of maintenance staff. The Pay Board recently stopped the increase which London Transport would have wished to make to maintenance staff and drivers.
I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will have discussions with the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer about what will happen in phase 3. If we cannot have some leeway on, for example, fringe benefits, higher wages and even the GLC providing houses for

London Transport staff; unless there is some leeway, we shall be in a serious position by the winter.
Finally, I put to the right hon. Gentleman four suggestions which would not cost him a penny. I hope that he will take notice, because several hon. Members have put forward similar suggestions. The first is to adopt a policy of scrapping a hundred parking meters a day in central London and replacing them by double yellow lines. The parking meters are not worth it, as the report has shown. Half of the parking fines in London are not being paid, and many London boroughs are only just covering parking meter enforcement costs. We should scrap parking meters in the centre of London and put meters where there is a chance of some enforcement—in the outer boroughs.
Secondly, we should introduce the principle of keeper liability. Although I am very much against some of the things that computers can do, the right hon. Gentleman knows that now his Department has got us on a computer at Swansea it would be not easy to skip our parking fines. I also think parking fines should be increased.

Mr. Rippon: I assure the hon. Gentleman that we intend to introduce keeper liability.

Mr. Huckfield: I hope that the introduction of keeper liability will be one of the few things for which the right hon. Gentleman's Department will use that computer in Swansea.
The Department has not gone into the question of licensing and, I hope, the taking over of off-street parking half as seriously as it should have done. Money has been made by National Car Parks and other private car park operators out of what local authorities have been doing. National Car Parks has been watching local authorities almost like a vulture to see what they are to do so that the firm can make the pickings as soon as enforcement starts. We must watch private off-street car parks.
Finally, we should have more bus lanes like the Piccadilly contra-flow system. If the hon. Gentleman would take action on such matters as these, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead, West (Mr. Horam) has said, we should see the


Department taking action and not just sitting back giving limp assurances.

Mr. Rippon: We have been taking action. The Conservative-controlled GLC made proposals, and I hope that its successors will carry them out.

Mr. Huckfield: Since the right hon. and learned Gentleman meant to say that before I sat down, I should point out that I have seen some of his bus lanes, and they contain more cars than buses.

7.48 p.m.

Mr. Nigel Spearing: I intend to be brief as an important debate is to follow.
With reference to recommendation No. 22, the Minister says in his statement that to defer these schemes would defer benefits which the schemes are designed to secure. A scheme which affects my constituency involves enlargement of the North Circular Road. It would increase two existing lanes at one point to five, six or eight lanes through a pleasant residential area. I hope that this scheme will be looked at ab initio, because there is virtually no benefit to the residents and only marginal benefit to the motorist.
The Minister may know that in a study which I have sent to his Department I have pointed out that road traffic travelling more slowly can pass more vehicles through any given area of road and, therefore, it is possible to blend into the environment, particularly a pleasant one such as that over Ealing Common, a smaller road which can pass as many vehicles in the hour as a wider one, as long as the vehicles travel at 35 miles an hour and not 45 miles an hour. That point was not made in the Buchanan Report.
I hope that the hon. Gentleman's Department will take this factor on board, because it is vital for landscaping and other proper treatment of urban roadways through pleasant areas.
Secondly, the subject of peak hour traffic has loomed large in the remarks of many Members today. A large proportion of the peak hour traffic in London is expense-account motoring by people, such as hon. Members, who get mileage allowances, or those who are pro-

vided with a company car. Local Government can do as much as it likes with parking meters and parking policies, but if these people, who leave their offices between 4.30 and 5.30, are able to drive home in their private cars there will always be congestion. I hope that the Department will consider this problem, because I do not think that the Committee did so.
Like the blood, transport in urban areas must have healthy circulation if it is to support community functions. The Government have not considered the problems of urban transport in the sense that it is as fundamental to city life as drainage or proper water supplies. To judge from the way the Government behave in those respects—they are likely to charge a compulsory profit on pure water and on good drainage—I can only hope that they will understand that public transport which is not efficient and which is not provided at low cost will be as damaging to the health of the community as lack of pure water and lack of drainage.
Thirdly, I did not agree with all that was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Doig), although I appreciate that it reflected much thinking in the country. In the coming years there will be a greater dispersal of work places and living places in the countryside due mainly to the expanding motorway and secondary road network. If towns are to have urban health and provide urban standards, there is no point in forcing cars and people to the outer areas. There has to be a proper combination of car use and the use of public transport.
At present there is little inducement for a motorist to change his mode of travel at any given point. Once he has purchased a car, there is little in practice, let alone in the report, to induce him to get out it. Having paid the money for his car and used it perhaps for leisure journeys, he must then be persuaded to use public transport in order to produce a balanced environment. In London many people who now have cars literally cannot afford to use public transport because of the crazy way in which it is financed.
Unless these aspects of the matter are studied, the intentions of the Expenditure


Committee and the designs of the Government will not achieve the objectives that we all wish.

Questions put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House takes note of the Second Report from the Expenditure Committee (House of Commons Paper No. 57) on Urban Transport Planning, and of the relevant Government Observations (Command Paper No. 5366).

FURTHER AND HIGHER EDUCATION (EXPENDITURE COMMITTEE'S REPORT)

7.53 p.m.

Mr. Neil Marten: I beg, to move,
That this House takes note of the First Report from the Expenditure Committee (House of Commons Paper No. 48) on Further and Higher Education and of the relevant Government Observations (Command Paper No. 5368).
In presenting this report, I take the opportunity to thank the Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Willoughby, who did wonderful work throughout our deliberations, and our professional adviser, Mr. Gareth Williams, whose advice was of enormous assistance to us in preparing the report. I do not know whether it was because of that, but he has just been appointed professor of education planning at Lancaster University. Perhaps the two are connected, perhaps not.
The Expenditure Committee is experiencing difficulty because some of its members have to serve on other Committees, some of which meet at the same time. We have suffered from this duplication of work, quite apart from the many other pressures on the time of hon. Members.
I raise again a point that I raised the other day. We were able to get the Governments observations in the Vote Office at 2.30 p.m. but I understand from the BBC that it had them at 11 o'clock, although they were, of course, embargoed. In other words, the BBC was able to see my right hon. Friend's observations at 11 a.m., but we were not able to see them until 2.30 p.m. I think that that was the wrong way round. Perhaps we could have it tidied up in future.
The Government had our report for seven months for study and we have had

the Government's reply for only four days, which does not give us much time to study it, particularly as the four days included a weekend when many of us had commitments that we could not avoid.
Whatever one's views on education might be, some other person has strongly-held opposing views. I suppose that all of us on the Committee received education to a greater or lesser extent, and so we have all had some experience in education and have also experienced watching our children grow up and be educated.
As does every Committee of this nature, the Expenditure Committee approached this subject from the layman's point of view. Members of Parliament may have an advantage over the ordinary layman, in that they are in constant contact with schools and colleges of further education, quite apart from experience of their own education and the education of their children. We can therefore consider the consumer's view with all that knowledge.
In the course of the inquiry we received evidence from the Department, industry, the universities and other education establishments, and from teachers, students and local authorities. We received a wide range of evidence and we weighed it carefully in reaching the conclusions published in the report.
We had only one vested interest—public expenditure; to see whether we were getting value for money and whether the best use of resources was being made, or whether those resources could be put to better use. As a Committee, we have not had an axe to grind, and we tried to look at the subject clearly and objectively. We have not been worried about offending against any accepted tradition in education. Nor have we been concerned about offending against any entrenched position, of which there are many in education, especially in some respects.
I should like to give the House one or two general impressions. Listening to the evidence over the year, I concluded that higher education and further education were a rather curious hotch-potch. I recognise the enormously valuable work, but if anybody had started out to devise a system of higher and further


education, I doubt whether he would have done it in this way.
Because of that we offered a somewhat radical change, but it was slightly too radical for the Government. It may have offended against tradition, but we did not mind that in the least. Thus, so far as I can see, higher and further education will go on much as before, with too many cosy corners.
Another point that struck us was the secrecy and planning of higher education. For example, in the White Paper it is said that it is planned to have 750,000 students at universities by the 1980s. What we do not know is how that figure was reached. We are not saying that it is the wrong figure, but it would be nice to know the arguments that led up to it, to see whether such an important figure is justified. Another similar example was the reduction in the growth rate of post-graduates from 19 per cent. to 17 per cent. We do not know what reason led to this conclusion, and whether they are based on valid criteria. They may be absolutely right and fully justified, but this side of things should be opened up.
In their evidence, apart from the Ministry and the UGC few of our witnesses seemed satisfied with the present system. Yet the observations that we have had from the Government give the impression that they are more or less satisfied with the situation, because they do not wish to change it in the way that we offer, or, indeed, in any other way. Another thing that worried me was the lack of any study of the cost effectiveness of higher education, and its cost benefit.
There seems to be a lack of follow-through studies to see how people who had been through university were doing—whether it had helped them, or whether they would have been better not to have gone to university. There is a lot of work to be done on cost-effectiveness studies. Vast sums are involved. Nearly £900 million is spent on higher education. Here I am being very general, but I wonder who is really looking at the usefulness of it all.
Higher education seems to bound on and on in this great educational machine, on the assumption that today's

higher education is necessarily right for the country. There is not enough stopping to examine its real worth, sector by sector, or the worth of the totality. I should like to see much more monitoring done on the usefulness of the whole thing. I am not suggesting that it is not worth while, but I think that we ought to examine it constantly to see whether we are educating up the right tree.
Those are a few general observations. I come now to my observations on the Government's observations on our report. I do not like saying this to my right hon. Friend, but I confess that I am somewhat disappointed at the Government's observations, which, broadly, seem to indicate an air of satisfaction with the present situation. I hope that I have got it wrong. We had hoped that this report would provide an opportunity for the Ministry to move out of its present rather closed circle, as we saw it. Clearly, reading through the observations, the "No Entry" signpost had been struck up. I hoped that at the end of the day there would be a little stimulation as a result of this report.
Commenting on the report on 29th December the Times Higher Education Supplement said:
it is becoming more and more obvious that the present system of local authority control over a large part of higher education—by 1981 50 per cent. of the total system—is creaking to its own destruction, few are prepared to face this obvious but inconvenient truth.
We did face that, and we proposed the solution contained in our report.
I turn to a few points in the report and the observations. The first concerns the manpower council that we proposed. The Ministry's observations seem to imply that there is no need for it. The Government suggest the use of the Unit for Manpower Studies and the Manpower Services Commission, presumably when it begins operating. This is only nibbling at the point we had in mind. The Unit for Manpower Studies is very small—the staff has recently risen from 10 to 17. That is not at all what we had in mind. I think it works only by taking fairly small samples of opinion. It does not do the sort of research which I imagine the Ministry think it does, judging from its observations. The manpower council we propose would be a much broader


and deeper project, taking a fuller look at policy in the light of current trends.
Stemming from that manpower council, which would have looked ahead at employment and jobs, we wanted to set up a national careers advisory service. The Ministry has said that that is not needed, either. That service would have disseminated the advice of the manpower council, which would have been very high-powered, from secondary school right through to university, postgraduates, and so on. The observations of the Government suggest that they have misunderstood what we had in mind—or perhaps we did not make it clear. It seemed that they thought that the service was only for higher and further education, when we said that we wanted it to start at the secondary schools in the Sixth Form or lower, so that people really got stuck in to some view of their life at an early age.
Student demand for courses at university would be based upon a better appreciation of what the future holds for students. To us that would make a lot of sense. I feel strongly that to get the best out of education for our nation every effort must be put into helping students with the best advice about their future. Some people say that manpower forecasting has failed in the past. That is so, but it was many years ago. They say that because of that failure it should not be tried again. I cannot accept that as an argument. Many things have been proved since then, and that is no excuse for not trying these things again.
The Ministry's observations seem to imply that we should leave things as they are—titivate them a bit but leave them to the University Appointments Board and the authorities. I find that rather a depressing observation. We proposed a higher education commission with overall responsibility for advising the Minister on the administration and financing of the whole of higher and further education. This was the same conclusion as was reached by the 1969 Select Committee. This is the second Select Committee to come to the same conclusion, quite separately. Here again, the Government have said that there is no need for this. I quote from our report, paragraph 65 of which says:

It might be argued that it is the responsibility of DES to ensure that resources are distributed equitably and efficiently, and that plans are made and policies carried out. We would be more impressed with this argument were it not for the almost unanimous desire of nearly all our witnesses outside DES and UGC for more coherent national planning of higher education.
We recognise the difficulties of moving over to such a system. We do not say that they are impossible. We see that there will be difficulties. In the observations, if I interpret them correctly, these difficulties have been used as an excuse for not getting on with things. I cannot believe that these difficulties are insuperable if the political will is there to move to such a system.
The ministerial observations indicated that the Department did not like our suggestion of a rolling quinquennial, but it has rightly said that it is ready to consider it. I ask my right hon. Friend what has been going on in the last seven months if the Department has not been considering that point. However, we will allow a little more time if it wishes to consider it, but I hope that it will get round to it. The more one looks at public expenditure the more one sees that a rolling quinquennial makes sense. I see no objections to it, except the sort of educational mystique that we must not touch this precious bit of independence. However, when one looks at the matter in detail one sees that there is little to substantiate that stand.
It seems that we must agree to disagree on these matters. I am sure that I speak for all Members of the Committee. I can understand my right hon. Friend's difficulty. By a most unfortunate coincidence she produced a White Paper on education that came out a week or two before the Select Committee's report. We did not know what was in her White Paper, and she did not know what was in our report. Having made that major policy statement, it is understandable that whoever represented the Department would have have to defend that policy. Such a person could not, a few months later, say, "That was our policy in the White Paper, but the Select Committee has said something else and we agree with it." Therefore, I understand why this attitude has been taken by the Department.
I should like to quote again from The Times Higher Education Supplement. In the final remarks of its leading article it states:
In fact, the proposals made in the report represent a clear-sighted, radical, and stimulating vision of the future of higher education—in encouraging contrast to much of the White Paper.
So, according to The Times Higher Education Supplement, if we accept that last comment, we win on points.
I hope that, as time marches on, our report will be studied again. Perhaps, on reflection, it was too premature and radical for the Department but I have every confidence that at the end of the day the Government, whichever party is in power, will have to get round to something like the recommendations that we have made. Education, like time, is an ever-rolling stream, and hope that it will bear all the old ideas away.

8.14 p.m.

Mr. Frederick Wiley: I congratulate the hon. Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten) and his Committee on an impressive and well-argued report. I found it particularly attractive because it confirmed conclusions arrived at by the Select Committee on Education, from a very different approach.
I want to deal only with the binary system. Because it is a classic illustration of how things go fundamentally wrong in education, I want to put it in its historical context, and I start with the Education Act 1944, which provided that all post-primary school education should be secondary education. As Lord Butler has repeatedly said, and I accept, secondary choices were never envisaged. This was not imposed until 1947 when Ellen Wilkinson imposed on secondary schools the pattern of graded education. I remind the House of the division. It was secondary modern, secondary technical and secondary grammar.
It is interesting that the criteria were different in the different sectors. Secondary technical was to meet the requirements of industry and agriculture and to give particular emphasis to commerce and art. The test was objective. But for secondary grammar there was the subjective test of the pupil's aptitude for books and ideas.
However vehemently this was expressed in terms of parity of esteem, that was how we got a divided and not a unitary system of secondary education. Because there were few junior technical colleges, this soon became secondary education, first- and second-class, and we had a binary system of secondary education. That, as we know, became acutely controversial. It met increasing opposition from both educationists and practitioners—the teachers—and from the local education authorities, ranging from the former Labour LCC to the Conservative Leicestershire.
I recall that that was introduced by a Labour Minister facing extreme difficulties. She gave way to enormous pressures by diverting them into three channels, and the main stream being contained in the elementary schools, redesignated secondary modern schools. As time went on, the justification for this became rather different. The Government had not redefined secondary education but had given realistic recognition and acceptance to facts as they were. I, among others, criticised this because I firmly believed that it debased the definition of secondary education. In retrospect, I believe that it was disastrous to education as a whole, and that we have suffered from an inadequate secondary education, cardinal to education as a whole, for much longer than we might otherwise have done.
I am not arguing that the present situation is parallel. Obviously, higher education is selective, and not universal. But it is important to recognise that the binary system in higher education was introduced by a Labour Minister in 1965 on equally false premises.
Fundamentally, it depends on the same divisions that Ellen Wilkinson made. To recapitulate, the secondary modern child—if I may categorise a group of secondary school children—does not attain higher education. For those who do, for one group we have the objective test of meeting the requirements of industry, agriculture, commerce and art. For others, we have the subjective educational test that they should benefit from books and ideas.
We have this dichotomy running through society. For instance, it is assumed that higher education will make the top civil servant better able to do his job,


whereas it is sufficient if the technological requirements of other comparable jobs are met.
I fully recognise that when this decision was taken the Minister was subject to enormous pressure. We had a rapidly expanding higher education. We had the enormous impetus given by the Robbins Report, with its beautifully simple, revolutionary concept that higher education was open to all—open to all, at any rate, with two A levels or, in many cases, with less.
[also concede—it is important to recognise the difficulties—that the right to higher education is more effectively recognised in this country than in any other. It is grant-aided to an extent that does not obtain anywhere else. But, again, as time goes by, we are told that we should be realistic. We are told that the Woolwich speech did not create anything. It merely recognised the system that then obtained. If that is so—and it is—my criticism remains the same, that this declaration of a binary system has afforded the present system a permanence and validity which it does not deserve or merit.
We are again in danger of debasing the concept, definition and purpose of higher education. As the hon. Member for Banbury said, the worthwhileness of higher education is something that we ought constantly to consider. The political, social and cultural aspects of higher education are all important, but I do not have time to discuss them, at any rate tonight. I am content to emphasise that it is significant that within a few years two Select Committees have declared for a unitary system of higher education. There has been no party division. In fact, in the case of my own Committee no Labour Member opposed our conclusions or criticised them on the ground that they were critical of one of our colleagues. After all, that is not surprising, because we were doing no more, and the hon. Gentleman's Committee is doing no more, than endorsing the Robbins Report.
Quite apart from this impressive expression of parliamentary opinion, I want to call the attention of the House to some of the facts. The Select Committee on Education, like this one, considered a considerable volume of evid-

ence. We found as a fact that the binary system was causing serious concern to students and that the consequent disparities were causing serious unease among them. We found as a fact that institutions and associations on both sides of the binary line were critical—indeed, hostile—of the binary system. We found that educational opinion was overwhelmingly against the binary system.
We found as a fact that the binary system was against the current trend. We reported that it was imposed
at a time when it has become increasingly difficult to define the differences between the various institutions of higher education.
We found that there was then a progressive tendency to remove and lessen those distinctions.
Those findings of fact have been confirmed by the Expenditure Committee. It found as a fact that very few people were satisfied with the present system, and it seems to me that all those who gave evidence, with the possible exception of the AMC—and even that body was critical of the universities—were against the binary system. The hon. Gentleman's Committee heard evidence from a wider body of opinion than we did, not only from academics, but also from employers, trade unions and people who came forward to give their views in an individual capacity.
The binary system was promulgated without any consultation. It was a disheartening discouragement to the progressive evolution of higher education. I believe that it will be as harmful and will become as controversial as the tripartite division of secondary education has become. It was imposed in disregard of overwhelming articulate educational opinion. It was against the recommendations and spirit of the Robbins Report, and this setback has been condemned after thorough inquiry by two separate Select Committees. The course of those inquiries has exposed it as being without any political or educational support whatsoever.
In those circumstances, I join the hon. Gentleman in finding the Government's reply inadequate. I beg the right hon. Lady to try to have an open mind and to think again about this, otherwise we shall have the same devisive and disruptive experience in higher education as we have endured in secondary education.

8.25 p.m.

Mr. William Shelton: I start by saying how much I enjoyed my experience on the Sub-Committee and its Report to the Expenditure Committee which we are now considering.
I pay tribute to by hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten) for being such an excellent chairman. It was with great regret that I left the Sub-Committee. Not only was my hon. Friend an excellent chairman with whose work I agreed, but he has made the speech that I was about to make, with the result that I shall not have to delay the House for very long.
I, too, read with great pleasure the leader in the Higher Education Supplement of The Times under the headline "A stimulating vision", and I should like to quote one more paragraph from it:
Many of the proposals go very much against the grain of long traditions and entrenched interests
and consequently
for no better reason than that they were conceived outside the magic circle
they would be most unlikely to find acceptance.
When I read that leader, although I was pleased with it and agreed with much of it, my heart sank because it seemed to me that it would be unlikely to endear the Committee's report to the Government and to the Department, and I felt that perhaps the ensuing answer from the Government might be unduly severe. Having read the reply in the four days that I have had it, that is my conclusion.
I especially wish to call attention to the rejection of the three important recommendations which, after a good many months of study and many hundreds of hours spent listening to witnesses, we put forward. The first was for the setting up of a Manpower Council, the second was for a National Careers Advisory Service, and the third was that there should be a Higher Education Commission.
I accept that the Manpower Services Commission created by the Employment and Training Bill goes some way towards meeting our suggestion about a Manpower Council, but it does not go all the way, because the purpose of the Man-

power Council was to avoid if possible—perhaps it would not be possible, but without trying we would not know—some of the wastage and high unnecessary costs that have occurred in the past.
I well remember a distinguished witness telling us that one of the main causes of unnecessary expenditure in education in the last decade was the over-production of science facilities in further and higher educational establishments. He believed that this over-provision arose from an idea which was prevalent a decade or so ago that the country needed more scientists. This idea was taken up on all sides, the facilities were provided, and it turned out that the country did not need more scientists. For a long time these facilities were not used, and a great deal of money was wasted.
The Manpower Services Commission, under the terms by which it has been created, cannot be expected to look forward to try to avoid this sort of problem in the future. The Manpower Council which we recommended would have tried to do that.
I come now to the National Careers Advisory Service. Here the emphasis must be on "national". I accept the criticism in the Government's reply that the National Careers Advisory Service is limited by the wording in our report to advising those who are already in or going on to further or higher education. This was felt to be a limiting factor, and perhaps it is, but, despite that, there is no reason to say that we should do nothing at all. Let us remove that limitation, and let the service also advise students who are going straight from school into employment and not on to further or higher education.
I have a suspicion that the rather specific wording in our report limiting the service in this way has been used to destroy the recommendation. I accept that the Employment and Training Bill in its provisions for local authorities has the intention of drawing together some of the information we would have wished to draw together and fit into the National Careers Advisory Service, but as the final operation is at local authority level, in practice the information being fed in, which in our case would have come from the Manpower Council, will be haphazard and often misinterpreted. It will not


achieve the results that would have been achieved had our recommendations been accepted.
I come to the third recommendation which fell by the wayside, that of a Higher Education Commission, the object of which is principally to end the distinction in financing arrangements between universities and polytechnics. As my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury and the right hon. Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey) said, the binary system and its problems have a long history. The ending of the system would be complicated and difficult, but I find it difficult to accept the force of the argument put forward in the Government's reply.
We must accept, as was pointed out in paragraph 72 of the report, that there is a great difficulty with local authority further educational establishments that provide both advanced and non-advanced courses. One cannot divide the establishment down the middle. Consequently, the binary system would not disappear, because the establishments would have to be on one or other side of the line. Presumably—although the report makes no recommendation on this—those establishments would remain on the local authority side of the line.
I understand that the Department of Education and Science is already concentrating all the new advanced courses in polytechnics, so gradually this problem may phase itself out. But, whether or not that happens, to do nothing for the polytechnics which have only advanced courses seems to be an odd doctrine. It is the philosophy that because we cannot achieve perfection we should do nothing at all. If the Government proceeded on that basis, they would do nothing—which would perhaps be a great mistake. It is not a philosophy which can be recommended for Governments. To condemn the Higher Education Commission for that reason alone is false reasoning, but the Government advance other arguments against the commission.
I accept that the Higher Education Commission would be a larger and more complex body than is the University Grants Committee. It must be because, first, it would incorporate the UGC and, secondly, it would cover more institutions. Again, I accept the Governments comment that it would require the devolution

of some powers from local authorities and education departments and from the UGC, although the Government accepted that that body would disappear—there is a slight contradiction there—but, therefore, to go on to suggest that the HEC, in consequence, would be a centralised bureaucracy, and to condemn it as such seems a little uncharitable. Surely, in management and commonsense terms, to undertake identical functions through one body, rather than to spread them out through half a dozen different, competing and disparate bodies, is the sensible thing to do and the opposite of bureaucracy. Surely that is good management. There are times when centralisation diminishes bureaucracy.
The third criticism of the HEC was that it would in some way diminish the Secretary of State's accountability to Parliament. That must be a matter of opinion. My opinion is the opposite. As my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury said, part of the problem is that so many decisions are reached mysteriously—at least, mysteriously as far as I, as a Member of the House, am concerned. I do not know much of the reasoning that goes to formulate many of the White Papers on education. If it is felt that the HEC would bring much of this reasoning into public discussion, I cannot accept that that would be diminishing the accountability of Parliament. It would be increasing the knowledge of Parliament and, in consequence, increasing the power of Parliament springing from that knowledge.
The Government's reply takes little or no notice of the other points which we believed the HEC would go some way to curing, such as decisions about the binary system. I draw the attention of the House to paragraph 61 of the report. In view of the short time that is available, I shall not read that out. However, very many distinguished bodies and distinguished people used very harsh language about the present binary system. I do not believe that one can disregard the people who work daily in the field, saying that their evidence is of no account.
Furthermore, we had clear evidence of lack of cost control, especially in the non-university sector, and lack of information on comparative costs. I remember, for instance, that we asked why apparently similar courses in differing institutions


should in one case cost, perhaps, two or three times per head more than in the other case. We received no reply. I still feel perplexed about that when I consider the matter.
I remind the House that there is a great deal of money involved in further and higher education. There is a need to open a wide debate on the subject. Our lamented Higher Education Commission would have gone some way to achieve that.

8.42 p.m.

Mr. Roland Moyle: I believe that it would be for the convenience of the House if I intervened now, as the Opposition spokesman on higher education. to make a few personal comments on the very worthwhile report that is before us.
First, I pay my compliments to the hon. Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten) and to those who served with him on the Committee on doing such a first-class job. Obviously, they must have worked very hard. They took a great quantity of evidence and produced a challenging report, as would be expected by anyone who knows the hon. Member for Banbury. This has also given us the opportunity of a debate on higher and further education for the first time in nearly three years. For all those reasons we are very grateful to the hon. Gentleman and to his colleagues on the Committee.
In many ways the problem of higher and further education is nearly always discussed in terms of polytechnics and universities, yet the problem of the 16-year-old school leaver is probably the most important one that we face, because it is the toughest and probably the most neglected.
This evening I must, however, follow the normal convention and omit the discussion of that problem, because I have just finished making a series of speeches on it in connection with the Employment and Training Bill. I am glad to see the Minister of State, Department of Employment on the Front Bench this evening.
There was one aspect of the problem of further and higher education which the Committee thought to be well within its purview—adult education—but the Committee felt that it could not deal

with that because the Russell Report was likely to be published before long. When the Committee published its report, the Russell Report was already on the Secretary of State's desk, although it did not appear for some months afterwards. I hope to repair the report's unavoidable omission by making a few comments.
The Russell Report is very workmanlike. It pays a great deal of attention to allocating scarce resources in the most effective way. In the education world there is a great suspicion that the Government are deliberately seeking to delay applying the report to the adult education system. I shall tell the Secretary of State what I think she should be doing about the Russell Report. The Government have promised that they will consult all interested bodies, yet I am told that adult education bodies have not had their views sought. If that statement is wrong no doubt the Secretary of State will clarify the matter.
In any case, the course of consultations upon which the Government intend to embark—if they have not already embarked upon them—is wrongly conceived in principle. With such a modest and workmanlike report, the Government should announce themselves to be in agreement with its general principles and then set about seeking views on the general details. The Government should, first, set up the adult education development committee as recommended by the Russell Committee. Having done that, they should begin to invite applications from local education authorities to make submissions for the rate support grant in September for the year 1974–75. If that were all done, consultations with local education authorities could begin, through the development committee, on how the many suggestions in the report could be applied in the regions.
I should like to hear what stage the Secretary of State has reached in the application of the Russell Report and what she intends to do about the consultations. The Opposition are very anxious that progress should be made. If progress is not made, it looks as though the September deadline will pass. It may then not be possible for local education authorities to make applications for rate support grant until the following September, which means that the Russell Report


will not get under way until the year 1975–76 instead of the year 1974–75. Indeed, many people suspect that that is just the tactic which the Government are adopting in the hope that if they do this the Russell Report will be left to the next Government to apply and this Government will be able to avoid their responsibilities.
In applying the Russell Report I hope that a worthwhile rôle will be given by the Government to the Workers' Educational Association. To give only one reason why, whereas the Industrial Relations Court costs about £¼ million a year to run and its subsidiary tribunals about £1·35 million to run, which is £1·6 million in toto—and we can all think of the damage those bodies have done to our system of industrial relations over the past few months—the Workers' Educational Association spends only £116,000 a year on running 8,300 courses for shop stewards throughout the country. If we could only get rid of the Industrial Relations Court and devote half the money spent on it towards supporting the Workers' Educational Association and its industrial courses, tremendous benefits would accrue to our industrial relations.
The Government's comments on the Select Committee's report are stodgy and unimaginative. When reading the comments I got the impression that the right hon. Lady did not devote much of her time to it but left it very much to her Department, which merely described the existing situation rather than making worthwhile comments on the contents of the report which had been so hard-worked. I did not detect that element of brilliant reaction that we have come to regard as a touch of the mistress when receiving documents from the Department of Education and Science. That is why I draw the deduction from it.
In commenting on the items that are before us I should like to say a few words on manpower planning, because the Opposition view is very much the same as that of the Select Committee. During the course of the Employment and Training Bill we argued that there should be a manpower agency, as a third limb of the Manpower Services Commission, which would have the job of planning not only the future prospects of professional and other people who might come from

polytechnics and universities but the whole range of employment.
Arguments about the machinery are very detailed but, very broadly, in this context we agree with the Committee. The right hon. Lady has been well schooled by the Department of Employment, because she says that she is on our side in theory but does not intend to do anything in practice. That is just what we had from the hon. Member for Londonderry (Mr. Chichester-Clark) during the Committee stage of the Employment and Training Bill but, as I have said, in this matter we are on the side of the Select Committee.
I am hurrying on rapidly now because of shortage of time, but I am not entirely enthusiastically in agreement with the hon. Member for Banbury on the subject of higher education. I have the idea that a higher education commission is the sort of thing that a committee chaired by a Conservative Member would recommend—

Mr. Marten: Just the opposite.

Mr. Moyle: I would not be so highly excited at the prospect of something like the University Grants Committee being put between a Labour Secretary of State and the polytechnics. Here, again, I am still open to persuasion, but that is my reaction.
On the binary system, I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey) that in the long run the doctrine of "separate but equal" will not work. It is just not in human nature, which ranks organisations in accordance with their theoretical desirability, and something comes out at the top and something comes out at the bottom unless positive action is taken to the contrary. Here it would be desirable if universities were brought into the course planning procedures in higher education.
I must comment on student grants—discretionary grants in particular, and especially some answers that we have had from the Under-Secretary of State recently on the cost of abolishing them. In an answer to his hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, West (Mr. Scott-Hopkins) on the 26th June, the Under-Secretary said:
Their total abolition would involve an astronomical sum running into hundreds of millions of pounds.


That is the first thing that gave us pause for reflection.
In the debate on teacher supply a week ago tonight the hon. Gentleman, talking again about discretionary grants, said:
Since then we have had a call for higher education to be made more expensive, for discretionary grants to be abolished. That would cost, I estimated last month, an extra £1,000 million."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd July 1973; Vol. 859, c. 165.]
In that context we thought that the £1,000 million would refer to the abolition of discretionary grants, so I put down a Written Question to the Under-Secretary for answer last Friday. In view of the figures that had been bandied about I was surprised to get the following reply:
Bearing in mind the many different kinds of discretionary award and other variable factors it is not possible to produce reliable estimates on the information available'—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 6th July 1973, Vol. 859, c. 216.]
Having got that answer, and aware that the hon. Gentleman would be stifled this evening by the conventions of the House, I got in touch with him and he sent me a letter, a copy of which I have given to the right hon. Lady. I conclude from reading that letter that if we take the maximum number of students we are budgeting for at the outside by 1981 the cost is not anywhere near £1,000 million but about £190 million a year maximum by the end of the decade. That means that at the beginning of the decade the sum of money would be substantially smaller. That is how I read the letter, but perhaps the right hon. Lady can give us a more expanded application of the point.

Mr. John E. B. Hill: If discretionary grants became, as it were, mandatory might not the demand for further education courses increase very greatly, because this is an open-ended commitment? Surely, if a limit is put on it there is the problem of selection.

Mr. Moyle: Yes, indeed; I would be quite willing to agree with the hon. Member. As far as I can see, however, that has been allowed for in the conclusions of the Under-Secretary of State, who concludes that the cost of what we are talking about would be £190 million at the end of the decade allowing for the

very maximum expansion in places for higher education.

The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Norman St. John-Stevas): Is the hon. Member not aware that I was allowing the proposals put forward in the recent Labour Party policy statement, that there would be grants available for those of 17 and over in schools? It was that figure which I added to the figure of £190 million to produce £1,000 million.

Mr. Moyle: Yes, but the hon. Gentleman's mathematics do not rate an Under-Secretary of Stateship for Education, because even if we make the allowance that he does that adds another £70 million, I gather from the letter, to the £190 million. Although that increases the figure of £190 million, I will agree, it still falls very far short of the £1,000 million he was talking about.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: The £70 million is per year. These are cumulative figures. So it is £70 million a year between 1973 and 1981, and I think that even a shadow Under-Secretary can see that that is very much more. If we multiply £70 million by eight we get a quite different figure.

Mr. Moyle: Yes, indeed, and if we multiply it by 10 or 12 or 14 the hon. Gentleman gets an even larger figure than the one he mentioned in his letter. In these matters we usually deal in annual sums, and from that point of view the most the hon. Gentleman surely can make it, including two of our proposals, is about £260 million rather than £1,000 million, although I will concede that if we multiply that figure sufficiently we shall in The ultimate get £1,000 million—or indeed £2,000 million, or perhaps £3,000 million.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I am sure that the hon. Member does not wish to distort what I was saying. So will he not agree that the context of our discussion was the expenditure that would be involved by implementing the proposals of the White Paper up to 1981? It was in that context that I was considering the extra expenditure proposed by himself and his hon. Friends. In my letter I pointed this out to the hon. Member. So the estimate of £1,000 million extra


expenditure by 1981 is, if anything, a rather considerable under-estimate.

Mr. Moyle: I think we understand each other now on both sides of the House. I think it would be helpful if we were to talk in terms of annual figures, for then at least one would be dealing with finite sums.
Because of this interchange I find my time running out, and I can deal only in the most general terms with the subject of higher education, our debate having been truncated.
We in the Labour Party are confident that as more parents pass through the higher education system they will want their children to do the same, and we are also confident that if social conditions can be improved more and more children will be capable of benefiting from higher education and further education as well. We are determined that that provision shall be made for all those capable of benefiting, as revealed by the appropriate qualifications; not all will want the same courses, but, relatively speaking, we believe there should be parity of provision, given the various levels of courses people can take. There should be a flexible provision of courses and combinations of courses.
That leaves us with some tremendous organisational and administrative problems if we are to try to put these principles into operation. They are problems of forbidding complexity, and many of the organisational and administrative devices that we shall adopt will, if we are not careful, have value judgments built into them which will distort the higher and further education system.
We have plenty of ammunition at our disposal—not only the White Paper, which will indicate to all our fate if we do not bestir ourselves, but also the Select Committee's report, the valuable contribution from the Inner London Education Authority, plus the Green Paper produced by the study group of the Labour Party.
In connection with the Select Committee, we have the valuable and extremely carefully thought-out evidence of the Association of Teachers in Technical Institutes and the Association of Univerity Teachers which was submitted to the Select Committee and which impressed me with its worth and quality.
There are many issues on the Select Committee's report on which I would wish to comment—it has raised many valuable issues—but time is drawing to a close and many hon. Members on both sides of the House want to make their contribution. So I shall have to leave the report, again with many thanks for its publication but with many of the interesting matters contained therein left for another date.

8.57 p.m.

The Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mrs. Margaret Thatcher): I should like to begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Mr. Neil Marten) and his colleagues of the Education and Arts Sub-Committee on their contribution to the discussion of these important issues. One thing they have shown is that the subject is very complex and that the opinions are very varied. In his own way, my hon. Friend put that by saying that there are always strongly-held opposing views and that he was not worried about offending entrenched positions in education. Having been a Minister himself, my hon. Friend knows that I must be worried about that, because if I did offend those entrenched positions, the headlines in the TES. and the THES would not be "Three cheers for the Minister," but "Minister offends Universities" and "Minister rides roughshod over LEA's" because in the whole education world consultation is a way of life. I am dealing with a world that is articulate in pursuit of its own special interests. I must take that always into account.
I want to raise a point about the time in which my latest White Paper was made available in the Vote Office. I understand that the Press releases were embargoed until 11 a.m. and the document was not available in the Vote Office until 2.30 p.m. It should have been available simultaneously at 11 o'clock and I can only apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that this was not so. If anyone got it first it should have been the House. I will endeavour to see that it does not happen again. My hon. Friend has given me one "out"—and very kindly. He pointed out that while his sub-committee was studying all these problems and taking evidence, we in the Ministry—and it is a Ministry without any cosy


corners—were also considering the problems and virtually simultaneously published our own solutions. Not only the Department of Education and Science, but the Department of Employment was studying some of the problems, and very shortly afterwards it, too, published its solution.
In a way, my hon. Friend is accusing us of going too fast, that is, of being aware that these problems needed solutions, of coming up with our own solutions, and actually having the nerve to implement them.
The criticism that I am getting now, following the December White Paper, is that I am going too fast in trying to revise some of the institutions in higher education, that is, the colleges of education. There is no criticism that I am going too slow, but, rather, even with the limited changes that we are proposing, that I am going too fast. I think, therefore, that I need not take very seriously any criticism from the education world that we are going too slowly, since, when I receive deputations, and so on, the contrary is said.
One of the reasons why it appears that we have disagreed with more than we have is that we have our own solutions. I hope that my hon. Friend and other members of the Select Committee, having looked carefully at what I have said, will see that, time and again, we have agreed objectives. We may sometimes have found a slightly different way of achieving them, but we have shared precisely the objectives that the Committee set out.
My hon. Friend and one or two other hon. Members took a little time in showing how I disagreed with the Committee. I think that this is largely the old question of whether one sees the bottle half empty or half full. My hon. Friends are seeing it half empty and I am seeing it half full. I want to try to put the alternative case and show how much I agree, taking first the objectives on which we agree. I shall then come to two substantial points on which we disagree, and give the reasons for our disagreement—namely, on the Committee's proposal to extend the UCCA system to all advanced courses, and to establish a Higher Education Commission.
First, the points of agreement. On the extent of higher education provision, the Government's policy for the scale and pattern of higher education up to 1981 was fully set out in the White Papers last December, and it has been fully debated. I agree here with the Committee—I quote its own words in paragraph 34—that
the ultimate arbiter of the pattern of our higher education system (within the structure provided) is the demands made upon it by individual school leavers"—
and that we should not depart from this principle in the vain hope that forecasts of manpower requirements might provide a better criterion. We are fully in agreement on that. I agree with the Committee also that this places an obligation on all concerned to provide school pupils with the best available information and guidance so that they may make their choices wisely.
In paragraph 15, the Committee's report spoke of prolonged Ministerial silence"—this is unusual for me—and of "a feeling of uncertainty" concerning the future of higher education. The Committee was referring, of course, to the period before the White Papers of last December were published. Those White Papers declared the Government's position both on the institutional chances which we saw as necessary and on the scale of provision, and explained that we saw need for about 750,000 full-time and sandwich higher education places by 1981 to keep pace with the likely rising level of demand from qualified applicants.
The figure was calculated upon the numbers in the age group, coupled with the projection of the numbers qualifying for A-levels, and coupled with the latest projection of the number within that number who would qualify for a place in higher education. Applying those criteria, we came to the conclusion that 750,000 places by 1981 would be required.
We shall look again at all the figures in the White Paper programme as we see how it develops over the years. I must defend my Department here. It produces one of the biggest sets of statistics to come out of any Government Department—six volumes every year. I look at them and sometimes I marvel. But one of the troubles with statistics is that by the time one has collected them from the system and analysed them, they tend to be


out of date. We put a fairly heavy burden on all the education institutions and local authorities by our collection of statistics, but it is, as I say, one of the best sets of statistics, full of extremely interesting information.
I turn now to the second point upon which we agree, although the means of attaining the objectives may be different. I refer to manpower and employment. The policy that we are following on the provision of higher education places an obligation on us to look also to the possible employment problems of those who take advantage of it. Few would disagree with the Committee's conclusion that those who have followed a higher education course should be employed in a socially useful way and that those contemplating undertaking it should do so without unrealistic expectations of their subsequent employment opportunities. Apart from the waste of resources to which the Committee drew attention, the human problems of unfulfilled expectations demand our concern.
We accept—and here I am really speaking for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment—the Committee's analysis of what needs to be done. There is an important need for the collection and dissemination of information, for the study and evaluation of trends and for up-to-date and effective employment services which build on this work to offer advice on education and career choices. However, since the report was prepared the Government have announced a number of initiatives to provide for this without the necessity of creating the Manpower Council and National Careers Advisory Service for Higher and Further Education that the Committee proposed.
The Employment and Training Bill, whose details were not available to the sub-committee when it prepared its report, and which we hope will be passed this Session, provides the machinery. Under the Bill the Manpower Services Commission will have a rather wider remit than the Committee's Manpower Council, and we agree with the Committee that the membership will cover employers, unions, local authorities and the professional side of education. The Commission will be responsible for planning, developing and operating employment and training services other than those

provided by local authorities, and for coordinating the work of industrial training boards. Its executive functions will be carried out by an Employment Service Agency and a Training Services Agency, also proposed under the Bill. We hope that the Commission will be constituted after the Bill becomes law, perhaps by 1st January 1974; that the Training Services Agency will be brought under the Commission on 1st April 1974 or shortly afterwards; and the Employment Service Agency not before late 1974.
So much for that aspect of the matter, details of which were not available when the Committee made its report—with a wider remit—before the detailed organisation was worked out. The Bill also lays a duty on local education authorities to provide a comprehensive vocational guidance and placing service open to all in full-time education. My hon. Friend the Member for Clapham (Mr. William Shelton) referred to this point. It is the first time there has been a duty on all local authorities to have this service. The removal of the artificial barrier of the age limit of 18 years for local authority careers services will allow them to function more effectively as more and more young people take advantage of the opportunity for further and higher education.
Moreover, by placing responsibility for these employment services with those already responsible for education, the Government's proposals help to meet the sub-committee's objective of co-ordinating education and employment advice. And they have the further advantage, compared with the committees' proposal, of offering young people advice, at various stages in their education, on all the careers from which they may choose. That means going much further back in education, so that the curriculum chosen may help the pupil to choose his career later without hindering him. The advice will cover careers that may be entered straight from school—and it is right for some young people to go into a job straight from school—and also jobs not requiring qualifications. On the collection and dissemination of essential information, the Committee commented that the Department of Employment's Unit for Manpower Studies, with a staff or less than 10, could hardly tackle all the tasks they thought necessary. My hon. Friend the


Member for Banbury pointed out that both the unit's remit and its staff have been increased, I think, to 17. He was not very pleased about that, but may I remind him of when I set a committee working on the James Report. There were eight people working full time for a year studying the subject of teacher training and by the end of the year they produced a report. If eight of them can do that I would have thought that 17 working full time would be an effective unit.
Incidentally, with the James Report I did a similar thing to what I am doing with my hon. Friend. I accepted all the objectives and modified some of the methods of reaching them. That committee was most pleased. I have adopted a similar approach with my hon. Friend and I hope that by the end of my speech he, too, will be most pleased. Both the unit's remit and its staff have been increased since the sub-committee reported.
There may be some misunderstanding of the unit's rôle. It does not engage in detailed forecasts of supply and demand for particular industries and occupations—and the sub-committee drew attention to the dangers of this approach—but rather studies the broad movements and features of the labour market in order to help those with particular responsibilities and more immediate concerns to make their plans.
The transition from education to employment is a complex and increasingly important matter, and the subcommittee was right to devote so much of its report to it. The Government do not propose to adopt the precise form of solution it proposed. But I hope the developments and recent initiatives that I have described constitute a sound alternative means—now well worked out and going through the House, subject to comment by the House—of achieving the same purpose.
I turn to a third point of agreement—students' residence. Like the sub-committee, the Government consider that the proportion of home-based students is too low, and they would like to see some increase. In the universities, for instance, it is only 16 per cent., compared with about 40 per cent. before the war. In advanced further education the propor-

tion of students in residence has always been much lower than in the universities, but here, too, we would like to see polytechnics and colleges doing what they can to encourage students to live at home.
It is a significant development that university application forms handled by the Universities Central Council on Admissions will in future include a new question. In relation to entry in or after 1974, this will enable universities with problems of student residence to take into account that some applicants live within daily travelling distance. At the same time, the rising numbers of students do require additional residence to be provided. We have therefore made substantial further provision for residence both in the university building programme and in the polytechnics. It has been announced previously in debates, and I do not wish to dwell upon it.
The fourth subject on which we agree with the sub-committee is student grants. We have accepted its recommendations practically lock, stock and barrel. We have taken action on its recommendation that financial responsibility for mandatory awards should be transferred from local to central government. In future, my Department will pay 90 per cent. of the cost of awards made in England and Wales under Sections 1(1) and 2(3) of the Education Act—that is, for students on first degree and comparable teacher training courses. Instead of having to find roughly 40 per cent. of the cost, the authorities will have to meet only 10 per cent. This represents a substantial financial benefit to them.
As to discretionary awards—and the relevant courses here are, generally speaking, those below degree level—there has been growing pressure for greater consistency in the treatment of students. The sub-committee concluded that local education authorities should retain their discretionary powers for these courses, and, because of their diversity in standard, length and nature, and the diversity in the financial needs of the students, I am sure that it was right. But it also recommended that my Department should issue stronger and more detailed guidance to local authorities in order to avoid undue variations in the criteria for making awards and in the rates of grant. I agree with the Committee that we must look again at this


question. As I announced at the Association of Education Committees conference a short time ago, I am consulting the local authority associations about it.
So far I have dealt with those parts of the report on which, although we may take a different view about means, we are really agreed about ends. This leaves me with the two topics to which I referred at the outset, on which we appear to be divided on matters of substance, although I note, ironically, that the Government are not divided from the Opposition Front Bench on the matter.
I take, first, the question of admissions to advanced further education institutions. I have considered carefully the sub-committee's recommendations for a centralised admissions system for all advanced further education courses, to be modelled on the Universities' Central Council on Admissions. But while this is in the first place a matter for the institutions concerned, I must say that I see serious practical difficulties in devising machinery of this kind which would not at once impose new and severe limitations on the colleges' ability to adapt their work to the requirements of the moment—the needs of the students on the one hand or their prospective employers on the other. UCCA serves a comparatively small and homogeneous range of institutions and courses. A comparable system for advanced further education would need to cover about 2,500 advanced full-time and college-based sandwich courses in a wide range of subjects at degree and sub-degree level in more than 200 polytechnics and other colleges.
Moreover, the FE system is not only large and complex but dynamic and responsive. At present it is possible to introduce new courses, often in response to local or regional requirements, at much shorter notice than if an UCCA procedure had to be followed. For instance, a new course could be finally approved, say by CNAA, in the same calendar year as it was due to start. I should not be willing to see that valuable flexibility jeopardised.
From the student's point of view too, though I recognise that the Committee heard other views expressed by the NUS, I should have thought it a serious disadvantage to lose or curtail the advisory work of the colleges which the present

system of direct application offers. Young people are helped by personal guidance at the polytechnic or college to choose wisely from the range of courses available. During the summer months the Department's further education information services makes up-to-date information on vacancies available to would-be students who have not yet been accepted for a course.
I understand that the Committee heard extensive evidence on the excellence of these arrangements. I had thought of making reference to the service but as time is moving on I shall not do so. I shall move on to the subject which my hon. Friends are anxious to hear about—namely the financing and administration of higher education—upon which the two Front Benches appear to be agreed.
The Committee considered that—
an overall plan is necessary for the efficient distribution of the resources available for higher education, and that this will only prove possible under a unified system of financial provision.
The Committee therefore proposed
the creation of a Higher Education Commission to have overall responsibility for advising the Minister on the administration and financing of the whole higher education sector, and for its planning and co-ordination.
If the Higher Education Commission is to be, as the Committee propose, a transformed University Grants Committee, it would have to have executive as well as advisory functions. If those functions were to be exercisable over the whole of higher education the commission would be concerned with over 500 institutions. As I understand it, the UGC would be abolished and the rôle and powers of local education authorities substantially affected. Indeed, the powers of local education authorities over a large part of the higher education sector would he removed totally.
The Committee appears to have been disappointed that I have not been able to accept immediately its far-reaching proposals. Even if I did not have substantial reservations about the Committee's far-reaching proposals, it would not be possible for a Government to accept such proposals without the most careful and prolonged consultation with the other parties concerned, whose interests are so vitally affected. Such information as I


have leads me to think that they, too, have substantial reservations.
For example, a similar resolution was put before the Association of Education Committees Conference a few days ago. It did not get much support either from Labour or Conservative controlled local education authorities. They did not want all the higher education institutions removed from them. If I were to say now that I accepted my hon. Friend's or the sub-committee's recommendations I should be in boiling water tomorrow and my hon. Friends would be bombarded with protests from their own local authorities and to some extent from the University Grants Committee and perhaps other sectors of higher education.
I do not believe that the Committee is justified in its criticism that the present arrangements inhibit efficient long-term planning The long-term strategy for the development of higher education has been outlined by the Government for 10 years in education White Papers. It is believed that the strategy can be implemented within the framework of existing financial arrangements. Long-term strategy, linked with the available resources, is the Government's responsibility. We have shown that we are ready and have the means to discharge that responsibility. I shall be mentioning later what is being done to forge a closer working relationship between the Department and all those concerned in the local authority sector of higher education.
On the universities side, quinquennial arrangements already exist. The security of a settlement for five years provides a firm basis for budgeting and planning. The universities know where they stand, and the arrangement is highly valued by them and the UGC alike. My hon. Friend says that, although the UGC and the universities like it, I must change it

Mr. Marten: We do not like it.

Mrs. Thatcher: My hon. Friend says that I must deliberately change something which the education service likes because he and his Committee do not like it. I am going some way to meet him.
In the Government's view, the disadvantage to which the Committee drew particular attention—namely, that the

length of time for which future financial provision is assured diminishes continuously as the quinquennium progresses—is substantially met when the Government are prepared to declare a long-term strategy. Nevertheless, we are always ready to look at the possibility of improvements, and I propose to examine with the universities and the UGC the merits and limitations of the quinquennial system alongside those of a rolling five-year programme. But it would be a perverse Secretary of State who said "Because the universities and the UGC like it and it suits them, I shall change it". If there is a need for change, we shall consider the matter with them.
The Committee made extensive comments about extravagant co-ordination and apparent duplication. First, apparent duplication is by no means necessarily evidence of extravagance. May I give an example? It may be more economical to provide, say, particular library facilities or a particular course for which there is substantial demand in more than one place in a city. Remembering the future size of our higher education institutions, I believe that the provision of common facilities for, say, a university with 10,000 students and a polytechnic with perhaps 6,000 students can lead to diseconomies of scale as well as physical congestion.
Secondly, the opportunities for economies through the sharing of facilities are not unlimited. Fewer than half of the universities and polytechnics are near each other, and each of these types of institution is likely to be large enough to require and use efficiently its own provision of general facilities. But I accept that opportunities for economies arise in the provision of specialised facilities. Here there is ample evidence of cooperation between institutions across the binary line.
I have a series of examples, but I give only one because of time. At Newcastle there has been very close collaboration between the university and the polytechnic in several ways, including joint operation of a closed circuit television service, joint planning of specialist libraries, the interchange of specialist teachers for parts of certain courses, and, involving other institutions in the area, a multi-access computer.
I would refer to an aspect of the Committee's proposals which caused both surprise and concern. As I understand the Committee's intention, no new course could be started in any university or other higher education institution without the approval of the commission, which would also take over the awarding of degrees and care for academic standards now entrusted to the CNAA. To concentrate these powers over academic matters in the hands of a body already charged with the control of resources and the monitoring of costs as between one institution and another throughout the whole higher education sector is quite incompatible with the principles of academic freedom on which our present arrangements are founded and from which I believe it would be unwise to depart. Given that a committee had this function in mind for the commission, I simply do not see how at the same time, the commission's rôle could be described as purely advisory.
Although the Government, I hope understandably, are unable to accept the proposal for such a commission, I am far from saying that nothing needs changing. One or two of my hon. Friends tend to give that impression. That is not the impression which the White Paper gives. The White Paper indicated the Government's intention to assimilate the great majority of colleges of education much more closely with the rest of further and higher education. The local education authorities have since been asked to develop plans for the future of higher education in their area to provide the additional numbers required by the White Paper policy up to 1981. The problems that this poses in some areas will prove complicated, but the opportunity now exists to develop, over a period of time, an institutional structure better suited to future needs. The local authorities will be submitting their proposals to my Department and we shall be able to consider them from all points of view—local, regional and national.
In this respect I am being urged to go more slowly and not as quickly as I can on the changes that I propose to make. While these changes are taking place we are also considering how the new structure of institutions might best be administered and controlled. We shall not sheer away from change, if necessary, but to

this end we are already studying, with the new local authorities' higher education committee, a number of key issues. These include their own rôle and that of the authorities whom they represent, in any new system; what part the present pooling arrangements should play in future; how the constitution and tasks of the existing regional advisory councils for further education might be adapted to the new situation that we are now creating; and how these councils should fit in with the new regional committees for teacher education, which the White Paper envisages to take over the present area training organisations' co-ordinating functions in relation to teacher education.
We are embarked on a considerable programme of expansion and reform and the Government have given the necessary strategic lead. On the first three subjects that I have discussed, I believe that the Government's aims and objectives correspond to a considerable extent with the views and intentions of the Committee. I hope that by this time my hon. Friend will think so too.
As to the last topic—the financing and administration of higher education—we are all facing a complex problem. Far from being complacent, the Government are embarked on a series of major changes. Although they cannot divest themselves of their responsibility for determining long-term objectives, because of their concern with the availability of resources, they have not determined ends unaware of the views of all the partners in the education service and are pursuing the means to those ends in consultation with those partners. The steps that are being taken may be substantially different from those the Committee recommended, but I hope they will appreciate the very real difficulties that I have pointed out in their proposals and will be prepared to look again at the advantages that I believe can be gained from the Government's less radical, perhaps less ambitious, but wholly realistic intentions.

Mr. Moyle: Will the right hon. Lady say something about the Russell Report?

Mrs. Thatcher: The Russell Report was not dealt with in the report that we are now debating. I thought it wise to answer that report, but we have not started consultations, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out. We are trying to


analyse the report, which took four years to produce and was published on the 27th March. Before beginning the consultations we should like to have some idea of the practicalities of the situation and be able to consult again on a realistic and practical basis.

9.28 p.m.

Mr. J. Grimond: I congratulate the hon. Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten) on his report, all the more so because I do not entirely agree with it. The hon. Gentleman has received much affectionate encouragement from the Minister—and he will no doubt be able to put up with that.
One of the most important things in education is to attend to the education of the non-academic child. Many of them wish to return to education later and should not be ignored in any discussion on further or higher education.
For the universities I do not entirely accept the aims indicated in the report. The most important aim, which is specific to universities, is to enable students to develop their capabilities and so contribute by better judgment and initiative to the society in which they will ultimately take their part. All teaching of professions, skills, and so forth, could go on to other institutions, though I admit that it is important to the university. If that is so, further education should be as flexible as possible. I regret that the Committee did not recommend that there should be a gap between school and university. It is a valuable suggestion, which should be explored. As I do not attach so much importance to careers structure as the Committee does, I am not so enthusiastic about its national careers council. It will almost certainly look at the trends and deduce its recommendations from the trends, and we know that the one certain thing about trends is that they do not continue. In this field it is much more important to make places in further education for people who want to re-train and go back into education later in life, and not to regard the third stage of education as the finish of one's educational life.
The other danger which I think I see in the present structure of education is that of bureaucracy. We are in danger of

being obsessed by diplomas, degrees and qualifications. If Christ returned to earth, he would certainly not be allowed to take part in religious instruction in Scottish schools. Einstein would not have been allowed to teach in Scottish schools, because he did not happen to have the Scottish qualifications that the Scottish teaching profession thinks desirable.
There should be far more latitude about students spending a limited time in universities or other institutions of higher education, and leaving before having completed their course, and far more use should be made of part-time teachers and of teachers who have something to contribute, though not necessarily permanent members of the teaching profession.
I have doubts about the Higher Education Commission. The Minister said it would have to review 500 institutions—I thought it was more. I was the chairman of a review body which studied Birmingham University, and it was pressed upon us that we should set up a poly-versity for Birmingham and that that type of unification in higher education was desirable. Personally, I am a critic of the binary system because I believe that there is not parity of esteem.
But when it comes to expecting the University Grants Committee to look after 500 or 600 institutions, removing them largely from their local base and inevitably imposing some sort of unity upon them, I have great doubts about it. There is a danger of our having one institution of higher education for the whole country with a great number of different campuses, and I cannot imagine anything more inimical to the real needs of higher education.
I believe that more attention should be paid to the organisation of universities. I have an amateur connection with the University of Kent and I have looked at the University of Birmingham. It seems to me that we should put more emphasis on teaching and less on research. Everybody must agree that research is a vital part of education, but it is immensely expensive and a lot of it is proving the obvious by graphs, or writing articles about other articles, which does not carry knowledge very far. Far too much emphasis is put on certain


levels of research and not enough on teaching. Institutions of higher education should be expected to teach.
The report makes no mention of the use of the buildings. We have universities with enormous, prison-like buildings occupied for only a short part of the year. Universities always manage to put forward good reasons for doing what they want to do, and they defend the university year on academic grounds. In Scotland it was arranged to suit the harvest. It is argued that the buildings are required during the vacations so that conferences and so forth may take place, but I do not believe that should be the reason for building them.
We must look more closely at the idea of the Open University, at the system used by the Scottish universities which keep most of their students at home. In that way less importance would be attached to the buildings.
On the other hand, we have to look for a new form of the collegiate system, not necessarily on the Oxford and Cambridge model, but undoubtedly many students are lost in a large unitary organisation which requires some sub-organisation, not just in the faculty or department, to which the students may feel that they are attached.
We should also consider the positions of the vice-chancellor and the principal. This is now too big a job for one man, and I would split the job of vice-chancellor from that of principal and deliberately make one responsible for the organisation of the university and the other responsible possibly for academic teaching.
Those are the main observations that I want to make on the subject of this report. But we must grasp the dangerous subject of loans. I start with and retain to some extent an open mind on the subject of loans, but I must confess that I am being rather converted to loans by the arguments of those who dislike them. As the report says, there is a strong case for loans in postgraduate education. Whatever one may think about loans, the experience of other countries is that they are not the invention of the devil. There may be difficulties and I do not know how effective they will be, but

personally I do not feel able to rule them out.
This has been an unfortunate year for universities in many ways. They have not made a good impression on the public, owing to the goings on of a minority, widely and probably unnecessarily reported in the Press. We have to leave them with this message: that they will be judged by their successes, not their failures. They should remember the parable of the talents and if they are to justify the amount spent on them it will not be by keeping their heads down and producing a nice steady flow of humdrum students but by contributing something to society at large—which no other institution can do—which will justify the amount of money which I think we must spend upon them and which up to now has been fully justified.

9.36 p.m.

Mr. John E. B. Hill: It is quite embarrassing in some ways for me to follow the speeches of the Secretary of State and the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond), who is a university chancellor, in a debate about higher education, particularly when I was not a member of the Select Committee. Perhaps I should begin by saying something that no one has said today, namely, to congratulate the Opposition on the good use to which they have put half of one of their Supply Days.
It is to be welcomed that education is being given more time in the House, that we are dividing it up and getting the chance to discuss different sectors in some detail. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten) upon chairing this Committee. Even if all its recommendations were not agreed, the report is an extremely valuable assessment of the facts relating to higher education in 1972. It will be a most useful quarry for years to come.
I would have supposed that while the Committee was conducting its work its influence would have permeated through the Department, perhaps much more than the chairman thinks. As I read the report it seemed—after the speech of the Secretary of State it is almost superfluous to say it—that a great deal of the Committee's recommendations have been examined and accepted. I would say that there


had been a pretty good harvest for a Select Committee, judging by the Select Committees on which I have served. Some of the major recommendations may to some extent have been governed by the very limitations of the Committee's task You set yourself the job of looking at higher education with special emphasis on the financial aspect. This seemed to lead you to some centralised conclusions.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Whom is the hon. Member addressing?

Mr. Hill: I am sorry Mr. Speaker. The chairman and his Committee seemed to reach some centralised conclusions, almost dirigiste—more applicable, I would have thought, not to the British system but to the European system. Corning from my hon. Friend, I find that somewhat surprising.
The difference between the Committee and the Department is that the Department cannot just look at higher education alone. It has the difficult job of trying to deal with all sectors of education at one and the same time. The proposed manpower council would be dealing with everyone from schools, having to put together the like and the unlike. Although the suggested higher education commission is fine in theory, in that it would avoid wasteful duplication, it would not be so good in practice. We should get rid of the binary line which no one likes. I prefer the idea of a spectrum, not a line.
But the crucial difficulty was mentioned by the hon. Member for Clapham (Mr. William Shelton). What would be the position of the further education establishment, which has an element—not large, but important—of advanced work going on through some link with industry? We do not want to take that away. An element of advanced work, where appropriate, is a valuable leaven in a further education college. It adds style and cachet. It gives inspiration all the way down.
Yet if one considers higher education separately and thinks in terms of employment for graduates, I feel that we are overlooking the more numerous national need for all the skills below graduate level. There is the immense importance of having an adequate flow of technicians. It may be that technicians will become

relatively scarcer than graduates. Therefore, these proposals seem to make the problem of upgrading national skills rather more difficult than easier.
I think that the University Grants Committee would be swamped if it tried to take on the polytechnics in addition to its present responsibilities. Surely, the strength of the polytechnics lies in the fact that they do not want to be universities. They see themselves as having a different function—not, as it were, just forwarding knowledge, but maintaining a vital link with the outside world of work and industry. If they go within the autonomous university sector, that link will be more difficult to maintain.
It is a mistake to try to deal with higher education in isolation, though admittedly that was what the Committee necessarily set out to do. The Committee's suggestions have been catalogued, so I need not refer to them all, but I should like to stress the suggestions made by the Committee that should be adopted. On the question of student residence and the idea of getting a larger proportion of home-based students, the Committee made the important point that it is easier to do this in an urban catchment area than in many of the new universities that are sited in the regions. For example, it is not easy to increase the number of home-based students at the University of East Anglia at Norwich because the population is not very thick on the ground. But we should try to advance that idea where it is possible—generally in the older so-called red brick universities in the urban areas.
There is a good suggestion about student housing. I am extremely pleased that some experiments in student housing with the aid of housing subsidies will go forward. I like the idea of using private finance, but for present interest rates, for student housing. The disadvantage is that in some cases the students have been their own worst enemies, because the behaviour of some has not exactly encouraged local private investment in student housing. However, I hope that will change.
The attractions of the Committee's long study, especially encouraged by the keenness of its chairman, naturally invited it to hope for definite conclusions that will stir up thought and action. I think that this has been the result. After


the Committee has dealt with postgraduate education, which is its next remit, I hope that it will turn to the further education system because a study of this may modify some of the rather radical views put forward by its chairman this evening.

9.45 p.m.

Mr. Eric Deakins: This has been a useful debate so far, and it is a pity that it has to end at 10 o'clock. It has been a cross-party debate, and that is interesting, because most of the time we debate education in this House on straightforward party political lines, and sometimes the arguments that ought to be brought out, and are not necessarily party political. get rather lost in the wash of party bickering between the two Front Benches.
Ours was an all-party report, and it was unanimous, just as the Select Committee of 1969, under the right hon. Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey), submitted a unanimous all-party report. It is strange, as the right hon. Gentleman said, that we both came to the same conclusion about the disadvantages of the binary system and the advantages of a unitary system of higher education.
Although I am supposed to be speaking from the back benches, as a member of the sub-committee winding up I must say that one cannot conclude the debate on the whole subject of further and higher education. It is a continuing debate that is likely to go on and increase in intensity and importance until we get our priorities right in the higher education sphere.
We need to debate much more intensely than in the past the whole philosophy of higher education, its purpose, the relationship of different institutions with it, and so on, and also, from our point of view as an Expenditure Committee, the priorities of expenditure, because there is no doubt that higher education is pre-empting a larger and larger share of the resources of education, which in turn is pre-empting a larger and larger share of national resources for public expenditure. It was therefore right and proper that we as an Expenditure Committee should examine higher and further education basically from the point of view of the control of

expenditure, and that may explain the rather radical nature of our report, as the hon. Member for Norfolk, South (Mr. John E. B. Hill) said. We had to be radical because we felt that the system that had grown up had been like Topsy and had just grown and there was a need to bring some order and rationality into it purely from the point of view of public expenditure control.
The right hon. Lady said that there was no real disagreement between the Department of Education and Science and the Expenditure Committee on the objectives, and she mentioned four recommendations on which the Committee and the Government are agreed. I think it would be churlish of us not to acknowledge that we are grateful to the Department and to the Minister for having accepted in principle at least, if not in detail, the substance of four of our recommendations. The right hon. Lady said that where disagreements occurred it was on means. There is always room for disagreement on means, even among Members of the same party. It is the disagreement on ends that tends to be on party political lines.
The right hon. Lady referred to two matters of substance on which there were divisions. One was the centralised admission system, and the other was the proposal for ending the binary system of higher education and getting on to a unitary system. I propose to deal first with the centralised admission system.
Our proposal for extending the UCCA system to all advance courses is held to be too complex. It would be complex, and we did not seek in any way to deny that, but, in this age of computers, can anyone honestly say that dealing with perhaps 100,000 or 200,000 applications a year—and there are far fewer than that—for 2,500 courses at 400 different institutions could not be handled relatively easily?
The Minister's main argument appeared to be that the flexibility of new course approvals in the local authority sector would be hindered by extending the UCCA machinery to that sector. The Minister implied—though I do not really think she meant to—that the flexibility on the local authority side is such that local authorities can lay on advanced courses at technical colleges at short


notice. The fact is that they cannot do so. Some of us thought that they could when we were hearing evidence, but we were assured on good authority that the system of course approvals by regional advisory councils makes it inevitable, if one is planning a new course in the local authority further and higher education sector, that it will take at least nine months to get the appropriate approvals for it after it has first been considered. There is not much flexibility in the local authority sector, even if there is marginally more than there is in the university sector, but I see that as being no substantial reason for rejecting our recommedation.
In making our proposal for the Higher Education Commission we were concerned first about having a more open method of deciding the administration and financing of higher education. In the recent quinquennial settlement by the UGC it appears that the decisions to change the staff/student ratio, to change the science/arts ratio and to change the postgraduate proportions, all of which are intensely vital and important issues to the universities, were taken without any consultation with the higher education sector in general. The UGC had its own machinery for consultation but no one could tell who had consulted whom, and the UGC made these decisions. We do not think that closed system is good enough for the future of higher education.
The Minister criticised the proposal for a Higher Education Commission on the ground that it would not only be advisory but would have executive functions. It is true that the HEC would have executive functions, but let no one doubt that the present UGC system is moving to a stage when in effect the UGC is exercising executive functions over the future of universities. The UGC guidelines which were laid down in the latest quinquennium—and this started five or six years ago in the previous quinquennial review—have executive force in fact if not in theory, and universities which depart from them do so at their financial peril. It is a case of he who pays the piper calls the tune. Although we may think of the UGC as advisory, in these respects it has executive functions.
The Minister made a strong point—and we were aware that this criticism

would be levelled at our report—that recommending a Higher Education Commission would mean that the local authority sector would be robbed of its control over education. But the Government in their observations do not say that the Higher Education Commission would have on it representatives of local authorities and that it would be serviced on a regional basis by regional advisory councils specially strengthened for this purpose with additional local authority representation and student representation, which might well appeal in this more open democratic age.
The Minister said that it was the Government's duty to study the long-term strategy for higher education. We on the sub-committee fully agree with that. Our proposal was not for the Higher Education Commission to settle the strategy of higher education for the future without regard to the Government—that is nonsense. Our proposal was that the commission would advise the Government. We are well aware that we need to retain and strengthen parliamentary and Government control over the £900 million that higher and further education costs each year, and we want to make that accountability more real by opening up for informed debate consideration of how these vast sums are spent.
That brings me to the problem of the quinquennial review of universities. Naturally, universities want to retain the fixed quinquennium system—and certainly the UGC does. We had a great deal of evidence—not from the UGC, of course—that the system needed to be reviewed from the point of view of public expenditure. The whole of central Government expenditure is, under the PESC system, on a rolling five-year basis. If that is right for public expenditure as a whole, it must surely be right for that proportion of public expenditure which is meted out to the universities through the UGC.
If the Secretary of State takes on board no other point, I hope that she will look seriously from the public expenditure point of view at the considerable advantages of a rolling five-year forward look. We also wanted the rolling quinquennial idea to apply to the local authority sector.
One of the main reasons for the recommendation that the local authority sector


should go in with the HEC was that under the present rate support grant system local authorities cannot look five years ahead even, as the universities can, for a fixed term. They have only two years or less in which to look ahead, and this must inhibit their forward planning and sensible control of expenditure in the polytechnics and general local authority further education sector.
The Secretary of State also mentioned our comments on duplication and sharing of facilities. This is very much a matter of weighing the evidence. As the right hon. Lady said, there is evidence of institutions sharing their facilities very well. She quoted Newcastle. We had evidence where institutions in the same city did not share their facilities, and where two buildings were being built—student union buildings, for example—where one would equally well have done.
Whatever the right hon. Lady's views, with rising costs the Government will have to make up their minds to look very much more closely at the way that capital is spent in the two sectors of the binary system for so long as we continue to have the binary system. We cannot continue planning the one system without regard to what goes on in the other part of the binary system.
The right hon. Lady also said that one of the reasons why she disliked the HEC was the fact that it would be giving course approvals for courses at universities. She implied that this was an infringement of academic freedom. But what is the system of course approvals at local authority institutions by regional advisory councils? Surely that is not an infringement of academic freedom. That argument is a non-starter. If it is right for one sector of the binary system to have new courses approved by an outside body on which it is represented, surely it is right that the other sector, the university sector, should also be brought within the same sphere of operation.
Finally, I want to comment on the one vital part of our report which is missing from the Government's observations; namely, our insistence on the fact that at present—

Mr. John Golding: My hon. Friend said "finally", but will he not deal with the criticisms

that this is a report on higher and further education but hardly a report about further education at the lowest levels? Will he deal with one criticism that could have been made—that the next report ought to be on further education?

Mr. Deakins: I am grateful for that intervention. We dismissed—if that is not too demeaning a word—the lower sector of further education because of the difficulties, which would take us into sixth-form colleges and education and transferability between pupils at school and those in the further education sector. We thought we should deal with that on a separate occasion, and we shall.
The observations on cost-effectiveness seem to have gone by the board in the Government's reply. We are not satisfied with the present UGC system of expenditure control in the universities. We wanted a system whereby an outside body would study cost-effectiveness in the whole higher education sector, both as between different institutions and within institutions. We had a fair amount of evidence from the universities that there is some waste in the present system. Indeed, the universities are not encouraged by the fixed quinquennial grant system to save money. They are encouraged to spend up to the limit of their quinquennial grant. From an expenditure point of view, we cannot accept that.
Finally, I agree with the hon. Member for Clapham (Mr. William Shelton), who said that what we were really concerned about was the management of the national resources increasingly going into higher and further education. If the Secretary of State feels that her observations will lead to the achievement of that end—I do not think they will—we ought to wish her the best of luck. She has a very difficult task with the present machinery, but let us hope that at least she can make an effective start, because we shall definitely have to return to the sort of recommendations that we have put forward.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House takes note of the First Report from the Expenditure Committee (House of Commons Paper No. 48) on Further and Higher Education and of the relevant Government Observations (Command Paper No. 5368).

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Ordered,

That the Education (Scotland) Bill and the Government Trading Funds Bill may be proceeded with at this day's Sitting, though opposed, until any hour.—[Mr. Kenneth Clarke.]

EDUCATION (SCOTLAND) BILL

Not amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.

Order for Third Reading read.

10.0 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Education, Scottish Office (Mr. Hector Monro): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
This short Bill, which is drawn very narrowly, has been fully discussed in Standing Committee and the main points have received close attention. I shall therefore speak only briefly about its provisions. In Committee my hon. Friend the Member for South Angus (Mr. BruceGardyne) endeavoured to make additions to the Bills. In the narrow terms of the Third Reading I cannot comment on them, though if necesary my right hon. and learned Friend will do so when winding up.
In short, the Bill is designed to clarify the Secretary of State's powers to make certain regulations and to remove any doubt about the application of a particular regulation relating to the employment of teachers by education authorities and grant-aided managers.
Clause 1(1) of the Bill provides that the Secretary of State's power under Section 1(2)—now Section 2—of the Education (Scotland) Act 1962 includes power, and has done so since 1st November 1965, to make regulations providing that registration—that is, with the General Teaching Council for Scotland—should be a condition of employment of teachers by education authorities. The need for this provision arises because the Court of Session has found that the powers in the Education (Scotland) Act 1962 to which I have referred are not adequate to make regulations prescribing registration as a condition of employment for certificated

teachers who were already in employment at 1st April 1968.
It has been the policy of successive Governments since the passing of the Teaching Council (Scotland) Act 1965 that registration with the Teaching Council should be the mark of the qualified teacher, and the previous administration introduced a requirement that from 1st April 1968 all teachers in education authority and grant-aided schools—those previously certificated and already in post, in addition to those appointed subsequently—should be registered. From that time until the recent Court of Session judgment, it was commonly accepted that the requirement was valid, and education authorities, the council, and the teachers as well as the Government proceeded on the basis that it was.
Clearly, therefore, it is desirable that the deficiency should be remedied and that, for the very cogent reasons advanced by my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Advocate in Standing Committee on 28th June 1973, the Bill should be retrospective. This the subsection achieves—that is, it does no more than restore the law to what it has been generally believed to be.
In Standing Committee I explained the term "compensation", which was generally acceptable to all hon. Members.
Clause 1(2) makes it clear that the Secretary of State has the same power concerning the prescription of registration in the grant-aided field as he has in relation to education authorities. This power has not been challenged, but, since the considerations are essentially the same as those in the State sector, it seems reasonable to put the position beyond doubt.
Lastly, subsection (3) is designed to make it clear that the amended regulation in the Schools (Scotland) Code which makes registration a condition of the employment of school teachers applies not only to future appointments but to teachers who were already in post when it took effect on 1st April 1968. This interpretation of the regulation has in fact been upheld by the Court of Session, but, as the matter is one upon which doubt could conceivably arise in the future, I think it desirable to include


this provision in the usual form adopted in these circumstances.
Thus, as I hope I have made clear, this is a Bill deliberately short and aimed simply and necessarily at rectifying a recently discovered deficiency in the law. It makes no change whatever in what virtually everyone has thought the position to be since 1968 as was clearly indicated during the passage of the Bill in 1965.
No fresh obligation or requirement upon any teacher, authority or other interest is being introduced. I therefore confidently commend it to the House.

10.5 p.m.

Mr. J. Bruce-Gardyne: My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State said that the purpose of the Bill was to clarify the powers of the Secretary of State. I think it is designed to do a good deal more, and I shall have something to say about that in a moment.
First of all, Mr. Speaker, while not for one moment questioning your selection or non-selection of amendments, because I know that I must not do that, I should like to ask whether one has any right to compliment you on the wisdom of your selection. I freely confess that the purpose of my new clause, which you did not select, is something which impinges indirectly on this problem of retrospection which lies at the heart of the Bill. I am sure that we shall, with respect to you, Mr. Speaker, have a more orderly discussion in the context of a Third Reading debate.

Mr. Speaker: Order. This is an interesting problem. The hon. Member is not allowed to question my selection: whether or not he can compliment me on it I am not sure.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: Mr. Bruce-Gardyne It was for that very reason that I put my remarks in interrogatory form, Mr. Speaker, and I take your correction.

We had a fair amount of difficulty in Committee because, for reasons outwith the Committee's control and the control of my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Advocate, we did not have the record of our proceedings as we went forward. It is a great relief that we now have that record, and that makes it easier for us to see exactly what have been the grounds on which the Govern-

ment have sought to justify this legislation. I hope it will be in order, in view of the difficulties which have accrued over obtaining any record at all of our proceedings on the Bill, for me to say something for the benefit of those right hon. and hon. Members who did not serve in the Committee about what lies behind this measure.

I submit that the purpose of the Bill is perhaps not quite as my hon. Friend described it. Its purpose basically, as I see it, is to say that the laws and regulations approved by Parliament in 1962, 1965, 1966 and 1967 shall be deemed retrospectively to have the effect which the highest court of appeal in Scotland has found that they did not have—

Mr. Ian MacArthur: No.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: With respect, that is precisely what the Bill says, and I urge my hon. Friend to check it.
The whole problem has arisen because in 1963 the Wheatley Committee recommended the establishment of a General Teaching Council for all teachers in Scotland modelled very broadly on the General Medical Council for doctors. In 1965 the then Labour Government passed legislation—with all-party support, I do not dispute—which was designed to bring this recommendation into effect. This is what the leaders of the main teaching unions in Scotland said that the teachers wanted. It was assumed that they were talking for the rank and file, but we subsequently discovered that they were not.
It was at this point that the trouble arose, because a substantial section of the rank and file were so unhappy that they showed every intention of ignoring the General Teaching Council. So we had in 1967 the regulation which was designed to assert that all teachers must register with the General Teaching Council on pain of dismissal from their employment. Local authorities in Scotland were required by the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) to hold the threat of dismissal over teachers who declined to register. In the end, 20 teachers were dismissed for failure to register.
At this point one of them, Mr. Malloch of Aberdeen, contested the right of the Government to take away the


existing vested rights of a teacher who was already in the profession and whose qualifications were uncontested. He argued that the Government had no right to take away the vested rights which he enjoyed as a certificated teacher in the schools. At every stage through the courts he won his case on one point which was contested at every stage by the Labour Government, which was hardly surprising, and by my right hon. and hon. Friends, which was rather surprising. At the end of the day the Inner House of the Court of Session, in June of this year, found finally in his favour on the one major point.
Immediately, this Bill was tabled for Second Reading. The purposes of this Bill are, first, to override the judgment of the Inner House of the Court of Session: secondly, thereby to deprive one individual, and others in like condition, of a right which he obtained after a long legal contest against the whole might and majesty of the Government machine.
So this is legislation which we should view with the very greatest care, as we must always view any retrospective legislation, and, above all, any retrospective legislation which is designed to achieve purposes of this sort.
I make no secret—I have never made any secret—of my belief that the General Teaching Council is an incubus on the Scottish education system. Hon. Members on both sides have said that it is accepted by the teaching profession. I can only say that the arguments some of them have advanced in defence of the retrospective aspects of this legislation go a very long way to call in question that assumption, and I shall come to that in a few moments. Frankly—I make no secret of the fact—I would be delighted if the failure of this Bill were to terminate the existence of the General Teaching Council.
However, I submit that this is not the real issue which we have to decide on Third Reading. The real issue is whether the case for retrospection, which lies at the kernel of this Bill, is made out beyond dispute. I accept at once that there are precedents for retrospection of this kind, but the closest precedent for it was the War Damage Bill, which, as many of my hon. and right hon. Friends will recall,

many of us marched into the Lobby to oppose with all the strength we could muster when the Labour Government introduced it in 1965. We did so for what were very good and sufficient reasons.
However, the points which my right hon. Friends have to establish to persuade the House to accept the case for a piece of retrospective legislation of this kind are two. I do not think my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Advocate will dispute with me on this aspect, first, that Parliament always thought it was doing what the courts have now said it was not, and, second, that the impact of eliminating retrospection from the provisions of this Bill would be intolerable. I submit that unless both those propositions are sustained the case for retrospection must fall. In my view, the House can be satisfied on neither.
The first point is that Parliament knew what it was doing when it passed the legislation, and that it expected the consequences to follow which the courts have now said could not follow because of a fault in the drafting of that legislation. My right hon. and hon. Friends have argued, both in Committee and on Second Reading, that Parliament knew when it was passing the 1965 Act that compulsory registration for all teachers would automatically follow and that teachers who declined to register would be dismissed from their employment.
That is a matter about which I must beg to differ. We differed in Committee, and I do not see that we are likely to resolve the matter at this stage. My right hon. and hon. Friends and I have a different interpretation of what was in the mind of Parliament and what was said at that time. However, I shall not weary the House at this stage by going over that argument again, for it seems to me that there is an even more crucial issue on this part of the Government's case, an issue which has been drawn to my attention since the Committee stage of the Bill.
My hon. Friend the Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. McArthur) in Committee picked me up on the question of fact as to whether Mr. Malloch had won his case on all grounds. By a slip of the tongue, I implied that he had, but I accept entirely that he had not. He was refuted in the proposition that his


local authority was not entitled to dismiss him. He was further refuted on the proposition that the General Teaching Council was itself not in the interests of education in Scotland. I share that view, but the courts quite properly found that Parliament in its wisdom had presumably decided that the GTC was in the interests of education in Scotland, so that any claim that it was not was bound to fall. I think that one must accept that.
There is, however, the third point, and the issue here was most fairly summed up, I think, by my right hon. and learned Friend in Committee when he quoted from the judgment of the Lord Ordinary. He laid great emphasis on the judgment of the Lord Ordinary, and I shall therefore quote these words:
I start from the premise that it is necessary to find in the 1962 Act"—
to which reference is made in Clause 1(1) of the Bill
clear and unambiguous language evincing Parliament's intention to empower the Secretary of State to encroach on the vested rights of teachers in the way in which he has done.
This is the crucial issue. Did Parliament intend the Secretary of State to encroach on the vested rights of teachers who were already in the profession?
Essentially, my case is that not only did Parliament not intend that but the right hon. Gentleman then Secretary of State himself did not intend it. This point has been drawn to my attention since we met in Committee, and it seems to me to be vital. My right hon. and learned Friend argued that the question of the vested rights of teachers in the profession at the time the legislation was passed was something of a technicality. I told him in Committee that I did not agree, but, whether it be technicality or not, it seems to me that for this part of the Government's case—that Parliament knew what it was doing in passing the substantive legislation—to stand up, it must be shown that Parliament thought that this technicality was covered when it passed it.
This is where we come to the rôle of the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock. The substantive legislation was passed in 1965. In October 1966 the Scottish Education Department, presumably speaking on behalf of the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock, sent a memorandum to the General Teaching Council on the subject of the registration of

teachers already in employment in the schools. It said:
If steps were taken in advance by the Secretary of State so to adjust various statutory regulations governing employment, salary and superannuation as to make the consequences of failure to register the deprivation of benefits under these regulations, such teachers might contest the propriety of such action on the ground that it infringed their existing 'rights'.
I remind my right hon. and learned Friend what the courts have now found.
The memorandum continued:
It will be borne in mind that this conception of the inviolability of existing 'rights' is an essential feature of regulatory provision regarding both teachers' salaries and superannuation and indeed contributes largely to the complexity of the provision.
This evidently came as something of a shock to the General Teaching Council. It did not like it at all. It is recorded in the minutes for the debate which follows that several members emphasised that unless all or nearly all teachers registered, whether by compulsion or not, the council would have to depend for its income on disproportionately high fees from entrants or subventions from the Secretary of State.
I think that there was another calculation in the minds of the gentlemen of the General Teaching Council. I believe that they were horrified to discover that some of the rank and file of their own profession were objecting to their pretensions and were determined to teach the teachers a lesson, that lesson being that they should be made to register and to pay for the privilege of having their own conditions of employment changed unilaterally by the Secretary of State. But the important fact is that at this stage, one year after the substantive legislation—in which we are told that this House knew were provisions for the automatic withdrawal of entrenched rights—the Secretary of State was saying that he could not do what the council wanted him to do because that would involve the infringement of those entrenched rights and would therefore be ultra vires.

Mr. William Ross: The hon. Member has this quite wrong. I have never resiled from the position that registration had to be compulsory. It was true under Wheatley and under the Act and was stated so. I was talking about their rights under the statute as we had passed it.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: The right hon. Gentleman has, among his other amiable and admirable qualities, a short memory. Let me read to him what the Scottish Education Department said on his behalf.
He may say that it was speaking without his authority but this is what it said:
If steps were taken in advance by the Secretary of State so to adjust the various statutory regulations governing employment … that such teachers might contest the propriety of such action on the ground that it infringed their existing rights.
This is what the argument has been about.

Mr. Ross: Mr. Ross rose—

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: I shall not give way yet. The right hon. Gentleman must wait until I have finished. What he was saying, and this was clearly spelt out—and I cannot see how he can argue the point—was that if he did what the General Teaching Council asked him to do and imposed upon teachers already in the profession a change in their professional status and required them to pay for that change he would be infringing their entrenched rights and they might be entitled to redress at law against him. That was the case he was making.

Mr. Ross: I would have been grateful if the hon. Member had given me notice that he intended to raise this matter so that I would have had an opportunity of studying the relevant papers and documents. If he had done so he would also have done his own case good because it would have been in better standing. Resting upon my present recollection in this matter, I never moved from the position that compulsory registration was essential, and from that I never resiled. That applied to teachers in service as well as to those who were joining the service afresh.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: I will quote another passage which will perhaps put the matter beyond doubt. The minutes of the General Teaching Council for 28th October 1966 state:
The Secretary of State was perfectly willing to implement this recommendation
—the recommendation in paragraph 128 of the Wheatley Report that registration with the council be obligatory on all teachers who wished to claim entitle-

ment to the benefits conferred by certificated status
without reservation as far as the new entrants were concerned but was of the opinion that existing teachers must be registered either free of charge or for a merely nominal fee.
That is the point:
must be registered free of charge or for a merely nominal fee".

Mr. Ross: Mr. Ross rose—

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: The right hon. Gentleman must wait until I finish the passage. The minutes continued:
In reaching this decision the Secretary of State was mindful that teachers had reserved rights and that he considered it inequitable that they should be asked to pay to preserve these rights".
That is precisely the point that the courts have now decided the Government had no right to do. We now know clearly from this evidence that the right hon. Gentleman himself knew that he had no right to impose that obligation.

The Lord Advocate (Mr. Norman Wylie): My hon. Friend is not being fair to the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross). The whole issue in that paragraph, fairly read, is that the only discussion at that time was whether or not there should be a charge. There was never any question, in terms of that minute, of whether or not teachers must be registered.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: My right and learned Friend has overlooked the whole basis of the judgment of successive courts, including the judgment of the Lord Ordinary.

The Lord Advocate: Nonsense.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: The fact is that Mr. Malloch won his case in saying that the Secretary of State was acting ultra vires in changing the conditions of his employment and charging him a fee for registration. That is at the kernel of the argument. The minutes of the council show that the right hon. Gentleman knew that he was acting ultra vires and that was why he did not wish to do it. What happened thereafter was that the council told him not to be a silly billy, that it would not work on that basis, that it could not be expected to operate on the basis of being financed by new entrants to the profession and subsidised by him,


and that, therefore, all teachers in the profession must be obliged to register and pay a fee for registration whether or not it affected their entrenched rights.
That is the decision to which the right hon. Gentleman finally decided to bow after months of understandably dithering about what he was to do in that predicament. He and the Scottish Education Department knew perfectly well at the time that they were seeking to pass a regulation which was ultra vires and just hoped that nobody would challenge it.

Mr. Michael Noble: I have been listening carefully, because to a minor extent I was involved in the matter at an earlier stage. The point that I understand my hon. Friend to be trying to put is that the House passed the legislation believing something that was not true. That is not so. We may or may not have liked it. but the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) told us over and over again during the passage of the legislation that it was so. He may have had other doubts and may have said other things at other places, but the House was told that this would happen.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: I do not accept my right hon. Friend's recollection. The essence of the argument when we were passing the original legislation in 1965 was whether uncertificated teachers would be allowed to continue in the profession. There was no mention at any stage of changing the entrenched rights of teachers already in the profession. I have gone through the minutes time and time again and there is no reference to any infringements of the entrenched rights of teachers then in the profession, yet the right hon. Gentleman was saying a year after we passed the legislation that it could not be done because the entrenched rights of teachers already in the profession would be infringed.

Mr. Ross: The Department was acting for me. The hon. Gentleman has not given me the opportunity to look at the minutes but it is quite clear what I said—namely, that they must be registered. That is the main point. It was the compulsion of registration which led to the amendment of the regulations under the 1962 Act.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyae: I am sorry; I think that the right lion. Gentleman has

again got it wrong. The main point which the courts have decided is that he was acting ultra vires in infringing the entrenched rights of teachers already in the profession. In his letter to the GTC he said that he could not charge the teachers in the profession a £1 registration fee because that would infringe their entrenched rights. It seems on those grounds in particular that the Government's case must be said to fall.
My right hon. and learned Friend, when I drew his attention to the evidence of the minutes of the GTC, said in reply "But the Wheatley Committee had all along recognised that entrenched rights would have to be infringed." Of course, the Wheatley Committee does not make legislation, nor does any other committee. It is this House which makes legislation. I do not accept that the then Secretary of State believed that he could not do what the General Teaching Council required because it would infringe entrenched rights of teachers already in the profession. Further, we cannot now be asked to accept that that was what Parliament intended all along.
I sympathise with the right hon. Gentleman in the pickle into which he got himself, but I cannot condone what he did. I do not believe for one moment that the need to condone what he did to get him out of the mess into which he got himself is sufficient justification for asking the House to pass retrospective legislation.
I now turn to the effect which the elimination of retrospective provisions of the legislation could be expected to have. My right hon. and learned Friend argued that a number of consequences would follow. He said that the General Teaching Council might be considered to have been in almost illegal existence since it was established. I cannot pretend that that is a prospect which fills me with despair. It would, however, be perfectly open to the Government to re-establish it prospectively if the legislation were passed with the retrospective element in it.
My right hon. and learned Friend argued that tens of thousands of teachers who have paid the registration fee, believing that they had to do so, since 1971 when it started to be deducted at source,


or right back to 1968, could demand their money back. If that is the prospect, it throws a certain amount of doubt on the proposition that the teaching profession in Scotland is wholeheartedly behind the G.T.C. But, even if that were to happen, we are talking about the need to refund at a maximum £200,000.
I am not keen at any time to add to the burden of public expenditure and the Government's daunting borrowing requirement, but £200,000 is something which we could just about sustain bearing in mind the desirable side effects.
My right hon. and learned Friend produced in Committee an argument in favour of retrospection which we must take seriously. He said that if we did not have retrospection local authorities which since 1971 have been required by the Government to deduct the registration fees at source from teachers in their employment could be held to have been acting illegally and could be subject possibly to action for damages. I accept that it would be wholly improper that the ratepayers of Angus County Council, among whom I include myself, should be required to pay because Angus County Council chose to fulfil its legal obligation to deduct fees at source. That would be absolutely monstrous. It was with the objective of eliminating that problem that I tabled the new clause which was not selected. It is not beyond the wit of my right hon. and learned Friend, for whose legal powers I have the greatest possible respect, to draft an amendment or new clause for the other place designed to ensure that there was no risk of local authorities being put at financial risk because they had observed the requirements placed on them by the law in 1971 if the retrospective provisions of this legislation were removed.
I have two final points to make, one of them arising from the Committee stage, on a matter which should be cleared up. I am not sure that it has been cleared up. My right hon. and learned Friend, in an exchange with me which appears on page 21 of the report of the proceedings of the second Committee sitting, discussed the question of the putative entitlement to damages of individuals who had been sacked under the legislation which we are seeking, according to the

Government, to re-establish if we pass the retrospective aspect of the Bill.
I put it to my right hon. and learned Friend:
… if we did not have an element of retrospection, Mr. Malloch, having obtained judgment in his favour in the major issue, would theoretically have been able to sue the Government for damages, which he is not now able to do ".
My right hon. and learned Friend said in reply:
I do not think Mr. Malloch, on the basis of the proceedings so far, could institute a claim in law, because the Lord Ordinary and the court decided on appeal that the employing authority was entitled, in the exercise of its discretion, to dismiss him.
But he did not seem able to refute the proposition that if we include the retrospective elements in this Bill any entitlement to damages which individuals might otherwise have resulting from what had gone before—an entitlement which they have not yet established—would be wiped away. That is something which the House should take seriously.
If we pass the Bill—and I hope very much that we shall not—I do not believe that it will be the end of the battle. I draw my right hon. and learned Friend's attention to the judgment of Lord Migdale in the Inner House. It was given a week after the Bill was passed. In his judgment he drew attention to Section 147 of the Education (Scotland) Act 1962, which provides that
… without prejudice to the … Interpretation Act, 1889—any … certificate … given under any enactment repealed by this Act shall if in force immediately before the commencement of this Act, continue in force …".
I gather that there may even be a certain amount of doubt as to whether that judgment will lead my right hon. and learned Friend to face further legal action even if he persuades the House to carry this retrospective legislation. If he persists in his intention to try to extend compulsory registration to teachers in further education, I have no doubt that we shall have further legal battles.
The House must decide tonight whether we should go to the length of overriding the highest courts in Scotland and depriving individuals of a right which they have fought right through the courts to establish against the might of the Government machine in circumstances in


which the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock can be shown to have known that the legislation was faulty when he introduced it and whether we should do it retrospectively to save the right hon. Gentleman's bacon. That is not for me, and I hope that it is not for the House.

10.40 p.m.

Mr. J. Grimond: This is a short Bill and I shall make a short speech, but that does not mean that I do not think it an important Bill. It is an important Bill in principle, and I think it a disreputable Bill. I cannot think that the Lord Advocate, who has a high legal reputation and who, like all Law Officers, is here to give impartial advice to the House of Commons, can be happy about it.
Because of the retrospective element, it is far worse than the Burmah Oil Bill.

Mr. MacArthur: Nonsense!

Mr. Grimond: The hon. Member says, "Nonsense"; all I can say is that lack of the Burmah Oil Bill would have cost public funds some £70 million, while this Bill might cost them £200,000. A great phalanx of Conservatives opposed the Burmah Oil Bill bitterly.
The most sinister remark was made by the Minister when as part of his defence of the Bill he said that it was only putting the law back to what everyone thought it was. We must protest against that view of what can be done with the law. The law is not what someone thinks it is and still less what someone thought it was; the law is the law as passed by the House and interpreted by the courts, and the courts of Scotland have made quite clear what the law was and still is until the Bill is passed.
Furthermore, as the hon. Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne) has pointed out—I do not intend to repeat his cogent arguments—there was at least a widespread understanding that teachers had established rights and that those rights were not being entrenched upon. Whether that was right or wrong I do not know, but certainly that was the feeling.
Therefore, we have a situation in which the highest court in Scotland has held that the law is as it stated, in which there is at least considerable evidence that there was considerable doubt as to what the

Act in fact achieved. Now we retrospectively change the law because that is convenient to the Government.
On Second Reading I stated my view that all retrospective legislation was undesirable, but that usually a case could be made for it when it put some citizen in a better situation than he would otherwise have had. This is retrospective legislation that puts a small number of citizens, who have won their case up to the highest court in Scotland, in a worse position.
The Bill has earned the contempt of every professor of law in Scotland; it has caused perturbation in Scottish legal circles; and it is brought forward by a Government of a party that professes to be averse to this type of legislation.
No adequate case for the Bill has been made. It will bring the law into some disrepute; it will certainly bring the Government into some disrepute, and it will do no good to the reputation of the House.

10.45 p.m.

Mr. Ian MacArthur: My hon. Friend the Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne) and I approached this Bill in Committee with great caution. I remember that on that occasion the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) expressed severe doubts about it. With great respect to the right hon. Member, I make this point. All of us in this House must approach any retrospective measure with great caution because retrospective legislation is something which we all profoundly dislike.
I disagree with one comment of the right hon. Member. If a Bill is presented by a Government which simply states that the law was some years ago what everyone thought it was there is not much room for disagreement. Equally, the whole House would rightly throw out any proposal which set out to say that the law some years ago was different from what everyone thought it was. In this case the law was thought to be as it was by everyone, with the exception of Mr. Malloch at some stage thereafter. We can salute him for pursuing his case through the courts. I entirely agree that he lost one leg of his argument, but that was irrelevant. What he won was the


central point, which was that the then Secretary of State had acted ultra vires in introducing the regulations of 1967.

Mr. Grimond: I totally reject the argument that the law of this country is what someone thought it was. If the hon. Gentleman thinks that, I trust that we will have his support over the interpretation of the law on immigrants, because the Race Relations Board and others have said that their understanding of the law is quite different from the Government's interpretation.

Mr. MacArthur: I must tell the right hon. Member that if the Liberal Party asked me to support anything I would look at it three times before rejecting it. The point is that it is not that some people thought that the law was so. I believe that every hon. and right hon. Member would accept that everyone in Scotland believed that the law was so.

Mr. Grimond: No.

Mr. MacArthur: The right hon. Member says "No". He did not say that at the time. If he believed that, why did he not get up and say so? It is all very well for the right hon. Gentleman to drift in and out of Committee in his agreeable way. He did not say a word about it at the time. He must have accepted the position. It is not for him, six years later, to come in and make this pleasant, elegant speech, throwing it aside, because with great respect to the right hon. Member, of whom we are fond, he is quite wrong.
I say to my hon. Friend the Member for South Angus, in the friendliest way, that we can argue until the cows come home whether he or I understood this or that about the implications of the Act which set up the General Teaching Council. I could not with my hand on my heart point to a date on the calendar, but I did know long before the regulations of 1967 were presented to the House that it was seriously proposed that teachers in Scotland should register with the GTC.
There cannot be serious doubt about that. I know my hon. Friend takes a different view. The critical point was the presentation of the regulations in 1967. The hon. Member for Glasgow, Craigton

(Mr. Millan) was Under-Secretary at the time, and he will remember that we prayed against the regulation. I was on the Opposition Front Bench speaking for education in Scotland. I moved the Prayer, and the reason for doing so was not to object to the proposal of registration, because that, rightly or wrongly, had been accepted. It was certainly the view of the Educational Institute of Scotland and the Scottish Secondary Schoolmasters Association that that should be so. Equally, the SSA took a different view and felt that we should reject the proposal. But we decided to accept the position and we moved the Prayer because there were various points of uncertainty on which we wished to probe the Government.
During that debate I asked the Government how many teachers in Scotland had not already registered with the General Teaching Council. I am sure that the hon. Member for Craigton will forgive me and will accept what I am about to say. He said from the Government Front Bench that "very few" had not registered. In the light of that answer we decided to accept the position and withdrew the Prayer.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: Mr. Bruce-Gardyne rose—

Mr. MacArthur: Perhaps I may go on with this important point, and then I will gladly give way to my hon. Friend.
At some stage thereafter I put down a Question to the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross), who was then the Secretary of State, and he told me that 1,200 teachers had not registered. That to me was not "very few". To put it mildly, we were upset that we had been misled, although I am sure the hon. Member for Craigton did not wish to mislead the House in any way.
The central issue seemed to be an argument which was being voiced noisily at that time: that teachers were not so much opposed to registration as to registration with a council about whose powers and composition they had certain doubts.
I then entered into correspondence with the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock, which he may recall, in which I said that I thought it would be wise and right if there could be a review of the powers


and composition of the General Teaching Council. As I recall, the closing date was postponed, the right hon. Gentleman was good enough to institute this review, and certain minor modifications were proposed.
In the light of those modifications, on behalf of the Conservative Opposition I stated that we believed that any real objection to registration had been removed, and we advised teachers in Scotland to register with the GTC. Indeed, most of them did. At the end of the day about 19 teachers refused to register. I accept at once that many of those who registered did so reluctantly, but there was a pool of 19 who refused to register. We may say that they were foolish or misguided, but Mr. Malloch and the courts demonstrated that in their refusal they had legal right on their side. We did not believe that at the time, but we believe it now. The Government were acting in good faith ultra vires. Those 19 teachers lost their jobs because of the decision, but they were acting with right on their side, however misguided, foolish, or whatever we think they may be today.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: My hon. Friend has pursued his case from the passage of the 1967 regulations. Surely the whole essence of the Government's case is that the 1967 regulations followed, and were expected to follow, ineluctably from the passage of the 1965 Act. I submit that my hon. Friend must address himself to the evidence that the then Secretary of State, far from regarding the 1967 regulations as following ineluctably from the 1965 Act, actually regarded them as being ultra vires.

Mr. MacArthur: My hon. Friend may take that view. He and I are great friends, but we approach this problem with a certain difference of emphasis. I cannot speak for the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock. I should never wish to do so, nor would he ever wish me to speak for him. Whatever my hon. Friend says, it was clear to me long before the 1967 regulation that registration would be a requirement for teachers in Scotland.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: It was not clear to me.

Mr. MacArthur: It may not have been clear to my hon. Friend, but that was clear to me long before this regulation was presented to Parliament.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: It was not clear to the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock.

Mr. MacArthur: It is not usual for me to speak in support of the right hon. Gentleman, but on this occasion I must nod sympathetically in his support.
At the end of the day, 19 teachers lost their jobs. The hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr. Lambie) suggested that some, if not most, of them were going to retire anyway. That may or may not be so, but I think it is irrelevant. The fact is that 19 teachers lost their jobs.
Perhaps I approached it in a mood of simple innocence, but it seemed to me that the only possible objection to the Bill was the effect that it would have on those 19 teachers who lost their jobs—I cannot see that anyone else is adversely affected—and it was for that reason that during the Second Reading upstairs I proposed that the Government should take special note of the position of those teachers who had lost their jobs. Because of a governmental edict that had been found by a court to have had no standing in law, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, in a most generous reply, said that that would be a matter for the Committee stage of the Bill, and with that semi-assurance I supported the Government on the Second Reading of the Bill.

Mr. Ross: In principle.

Mr. MacArthur: Yes. In Committee I made the point again in rather more detail, and I was grateful to my hon. Friend for saying that compensation would be paid to all those teachers who had lost their jobs and could show that they had lost money in any way, and that included loss of pension rights, and so on.
I should make the point, because I do not think it has been apprehended outside the Scottish Standing Committee and one or two newspapers in Scotland, that the only people who will suffer because of the Bill are the 19 teachers who lost their jobs. The Government have accepted my proposals, supported by my hon. Friends the Members for Edinburgh, South (Mr. Clark Hutchison) and Bute and North


Ayrshire (Sir F. Maclean) and others, that compensation should be paid to them, and those teachers who can show to the satisfaction of the local authorities which employ them that they have lost income or pension rights or in any other way will have that loss made up to them.
I must say to my hon. Friend—and I am sure that he understands this—that if the Government had not been able to give that assurance I should not have been able to support the Bill. That assurance removes any grounds for opposition to the Bill, much as I dislike retrospection. The Bill must be judged against the circumstances of the time. It must be judged against what we all believed in this House and what people throughout Scotland believed. We believed the position to be as laid down in the regulation. Mr. Malloch, with great credit to him, fought his case in the courts. He lost one leg of the argument, but he won the central point, which was to establish that the Secretary of State had acted ultra vires.
The Government have now recognised that there is a debt of honour to these 19 teachers, they are prepared to meet that debt, and, therefore, I believe that all grounds for opposition to the Bill have been removed.

11.0 p.m.

Mr. Bruce Millan: As I was engaged in another Committee, unfortunately I was unable to attend the meeting of the Second Reading Committee or the proceedings of the Committee stage. I had not intended to intervene until I heard the speech of the hon. Member for South Angus (Mr. BruceGardyne).
I was the Under-Secretary of State responsible for handling matters affecting the General Teaching Council—responsible to my right hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross)—during most of the period concerned. I was not at the Scottish Office when the General Teaching Council Act 1965 went through and, therefore, I must be excluded from any blame or praise for whatever may have been said during the passage of the Bill.
The hon. Member for South Angus raised the question whether there was any need for certificated teachers to register

with the General Teaching Council or whether it was intended that they should register to get the benefit of certificated status. When I went to the Scottish Office I checked on this carefully, and I say categorically that there is absolutely no doubt about that.
The Wheatley Committee in paragraph 128 of its report said:
We therefore recommend that registration with the council be obligatory on all teachers who wish to claim entitlement to the benefits conferred by certificated status.
These were the benefits of protection from dismissal, benefits of salary, superannuaion and so on. There is absolutely no doubt that when the General Teaching Council Bill went through the Government's intention, accepted by the teachers' associations, was that certificated teachers would be obliged to register with the General Teaching Council. The membership of the Wheatley Committee included representatives of all the three major teachers' associations in Scotland, including the SSA, which afterwards was violently opposed to the operation of the General Teaching Council. I wrote literally hundreds of letters to Members of Parliament and others when I was at the Scottish Office dealing with that specific matter, and there is absolutely no doubt about it.
The reason for my intervention is that the hon. Member for South Angus said that not only were the regulations ultra vires but that the Secretary of State had been advised and had accepted at some time prior to that that it would be illegal for him to make regulations of this sort. The hon. Gentleman substantiated that remark by quoting from the General Teaching Council minutes which had been obtained, legitimately, by Mr. Malloch and passed on to the hon. Gentleman and others. I say categorically that that is not the position. Never at any time was advice given to the Secretary of State that it would be illegal to introduce regulations of this sort. Any Secretary of State receiving that advice would have been culpable had he proceeded with the regulations. The Secretary of State never received that advice because it was never given to him.
The regulations and the whole subject of the General Teaching Council gave rise to considerable public controversy and subsequently to various court actions.
At one time the Secretary of State himself took action against local authorities in connection with the implementation of the regulations. I was particularly careful to make sure on the advice that was available to us that everything that we had done and were doing stood on firm legal ground. If ultimately the courts have decided otherwise, one can say with hindsight and perhaps a little unfairly that the legal advice at some point must have been defective.
There is no question of the Secretary of State at any time being advised that there was any doubt about the way in which he was exercising what he and his advisers, legal and otherwise, believed to be his rights under the General Teaching Council Act and the regulations. If the hon. Gentleman will not accept that, that is a great pity. That happens to be the situation.
The hon. Gentleman has picked out a particular passage in a memorandum dated 10th October 1966 which was sent to the GTC. When this passage appeared in a memorandum which I received from Mr. Malloch, which other hon. Members will have received within the last 10 days or so, I was startled to see it quoted. I therefore took the trouble to check on the passage. Unfortunately, I do not have the document with me. I understood that all these matters had been dealt with exhaustively in Committee. I find it slightly odd that we seem to be having a Second Reading debate on Third Reading. I checked on this matter, because if it were true that the Secretary of State had had legal advice and that he was likely to be acting improperly, that would be a serious charge to level against him.
As I understand the position, the memorandum set out four possible courses of conduct concerning registration. It was a discussion document sent by the Scottish Education Department to the GTC. As I recollect it, it said that there were various possibilities, because it would have been possible for the Secretary of State not to have introduced compulsory registration. In that sense, he was a free agent. But if he had not done that the GTC would have been an absolute sham and could not have worked, because one could not run the Scottish

education system on the basis that some teachers were registered and some were not and that they all had equal status and rights regardless of whether or not they were registered. But it would have been theoretically possible for the Secretary of State to have behaved in that way.
Four courses of action were set out in this memorandum. One was simply that only new entrants needed to be registered, and that perhaps certificated teachers need not be registered.
The second possibility was to use the salaries regulations as a kind of lever by suggesting that new salaries regulations, which were then required every time there was an increase in salaries, would apply only to the registered teachers, and not to other teachers, including certificated teachers, which would have meant that their salaries would have continued on the same basis as previously.
The third possibility was compulsory registration immediately for all teachers, including previously certificated teachers.
As I recollect it without having the document, the fourth possibility was that there should be full registration but that this should be deferred for a year until it could be seen whether the teachers' associations and teachers generally would have been willing to register without the compulsion being laid down by regulations.
Without going into more detail about this matter, there were a number of other issues which were very much involved in the question of compulsory registration at the time.
As the hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. MacArthur) has said, one of the objections to the GTC of the SSA, for example, and of many individual teachers was that no action had been taken to remove all uncertificated and unqualified teachers from the schools. It was a matter of contention whether teachers would be willing to accept compulsory registration while there were still uncertificated teachers in the schools. For that matter, Mr. Malloch's objection to the GTC was specific on the point of the existence of uncertificated teachers.
There was another argument which I thought was false—that it was all right for certificated teachers to be required to


register or even, as was sometimes suggested, to be put on the register automatically, provided that they did not have to pay the £1 fee. Therefore, there were a number of complicated matters involved at the time.
Apart from the fact that the word "rights" in the passage appears in inverted commas in the Secretary of State's letter, the passage the hon. Gentleman read out is very much concerned with the matters that the Lord Advocate mentioned in an intervention and, even if it were not, it could not bear the interpretation, and does not say, that the Secretary of State has been advised that regulations making registration compulsory would be illegal. The passage says no such thing. The passage talks about "rights" and about the fact that teachers who believed that they had such "rights" might contest the regulations, because many of them might feel aggrieved by the regulations being introduced. The passage does not say that the legal advice that the Secretary of State received was to the effect that the regulations would be illegal and that, therefore, he could not introduce the regulations.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: The passage to which I direct the hon. Gentleman's attention is that which says:
The Secretary of State was of the opinion that existing teachers must be registered either free of charge or for a merely nominal fee. In reaching this decision the Secretary of State was mindful that teachers had reserved rights and he considered it inequitable that they should be asked to pay to reserve those rights.

Mr. Millan: That is an entirely different point. It is a question whether teachers should pay a fee for being registered.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: Mr. Bruce-Gardyne That is the point which the courts have decided.

Mr. Millan: If the hon. Gentleman believes that that is what the courts have decided, he is under a complete misapprehension. The question whether a fee was payable was not before the courts. That is not a matter which the courts have decided. The hon. Gentleman has tonight made a very long speech containing serious and malicious charges against my right hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock without giving him notice

that he intended to do that, and he has done it, as he has just demonstrated, under a complete misapprehension.
I want simply to re-emphasise two points. It was intended all along that the benefits of registration would apply only to certificated teachers if they registered. That was explicit in the report of the Wheatley Commission and was clear during the passage of the Bill in 1965. On the second point, as the hon. Gentleman has just demonstrated, there was nothing in the memorandum of 10th October 1966 to suggest that my right hon. Friend accepted at any time, or was advised at any time, that anything he was doing under the regulations was or could he argued to be illegal.

11.13 p.m.

Miss Mary Holt: Mr. Malloch has written to me, and I became aware of the very important principle involved in the Bill when I served on the Scottish Grand Committee. It appeared to me that this was such an important principle that even I should become further involved in it tonight.
I repudiate completely the view advanced by my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. MacArthur) that the Act merely expresses what the law was thought to be. The history of English law reflects completely the fact that over the years people have challenged in the courts what the law was thought to be, and it is as a result of test cases such as the impeachment of the five bishops, Hampden's case and the famous 1771 case of the slave, that English law has protected the rights of the individual. In a minor way Mr. Malloch is in the line of cases which began with John Hampden.
The Education (Scotland) Act 1872 made certificated teachers a category of teachers to be employed in schools in Scotland, and before this Bill made registered teachers a category to be employed, Section 147 of the Education (Scotland) Act 1962 states:
Provided that without prejudice to … the Interpretation Act, 1889 … any … certificate given … under any enactment repealed by this Act shall, if in force immediately before the commencement … continue in force …".
Section 38(2)(c) of the Interpretation Act 1889 provides that the repeal of an


enactment shall not unless the contrary appears
… affect any right, privilege … acquired … under any enactment so repealed …".
I am indebted for the reference to these statutes to the judgment of Lord Migdale in the Inner House.
It is quite clear that this Bill, if passed, will take away vested rights. In my submission, it is utterly deplorable that retrospective legislation should take away a vested right. The Labour Opposition made a tremendous fuss a few days ago about the retroactive effect of a decision of the House of Lords under the Immigration Act. This is a far worse case, affecting the rights of the subject, yet there is not a word from the supine Front Bench opposite except of support for this utterly deplorable Bill. It is far worse that the Secretary of State should consider that an assurance of compensation is good enough when taking away a vested right. One Opposition hon. Member said that the numbers affected were very few—that there were only 19—but if the right of only one person is affected it is a matter for this House to consider.
The Bill as drafted will not provide for damages suffered under is provisions. I must ask the Lord Advocate to reconsider that matter and not to put forward this Bill as it stands to the House without at the very least legislative provision for damages for those unfortunate people who lost their jobs as a result of a mistake made by the Secretary of State for Scotland in his regulations.

Mr. Michael Clark Hutchison: My hon. Friend challenges the regulations—

Miss Holt: With respect, I was not a Member of the House at that time, and I was not a teacher affected by the regulation. Further, I am not a Scots person. It is simply because I feel that the liberty of an individual is affected and a vested right taken away that I, an English person, rise to assist a Scots person who has challenged the Secretary of State right up to the highest court of Scotland. I was on the Committee and I am pleased to say that I voted against the Bill. If the arguments advanced tonight were to be accepted, every time anybody challenged the Government in the courts the Government could immediately introduce

a Bill to make sure that the matter was retroactively operated as everyone thought it did.

11.20 p.m.

Mr. John Pardoe: I ought immediately to declare an interest, though very indirect. Unlike the hon. Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne), I support the principle of the General Teaching Council—indeed, I want a teachers' council south of the border, and have said so in this House for many years. But I believe that this is a disgraceful and shaming Bill. It is a Bill which no one remotely connected with the legal profession ought to bring to the House, and I am surprised to find the Lord Advocate here to defend it.
I will briefly outline the story as I see it. I am sure that hon. Members will wish to correct me on points of fact if I am wrong. In 1965 Parliament established the General Teaching Council. The Act did not make registration compulsory. In 1967, for one reason or another, the then Secretary of State made a regulation making registration a condition of employment. At least, that is what he thought he did. We are now discussing the difficulties of that. Pressure was brought on local authorities to dismiss those teachers who refused to register. Some teachers were dismissed, and they contested the legality of the regulation.
It seems to me that the first principle involved is whether there ought to be any compulsory registration at all. I think not, but that is not the main point at issue tonight; it ought to have been contested on some previous occasion. I was not a Member of the House when the 1965 Bill was passed.
The second principal is: what was the intention of the 1965 Act? Several hon. Members on both sides have referred to the intentions of the Wheatley Report, and have made quotations from it, purporting to show that Wheatley thought compulsion had to be introduced and, indeed, advocated it. In fact, paragraph 36 said:
In terms of the regulations the final teachers certificate is to be regarded as a permanent certificate which may not be withdrawn or suspended except on grounds of misconduct".
We all know that that is the case and that that is the law as it stands at present.
The Wheatley Committee clearly indicated that it recognised the problem.
What did Parliament intend? My right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) has already taken certain hon. Members to task for daring ever to suggest that what the law was thought to intend is important. I maintain that there is nothing in the Act which even hints at making registration of a certificated teacher compulsory or a condition of employment. I am reinforced in that by the Law Lords. There is no doubt of the judgment of the Law Lords facing this problem.
For instance, we have Lord Reid in June 1971:
We were not referred to anything in the Teaching Council Act 1965 and I have found nothing to indicate any intention that registration should be made compulsory or should be made a condition for the continued employment of certificated teachers".
Again, Lord Wilberforce said in June, 1971:
I find it hard to believe that it can really have been intended that men and women validly qualified by certification before the regulation was amended were ipso facto to be deprived of employment without regard for vested rights".
On 25th January this year Lord Keith said:
Nothing in the 1965 Act bore to make registration with the council an essential condition of employment as a teacher by an education authority, either for teachers already in such employment or for those who might be taken into employment for the future".
I shall not continue all the quotations; they are alike, and the Law Lords are clearly saying that Parliament did not intend that in this matter there should be compulsion and that, if it had intended compulsion, it would have said so. [Interruption.] Perhaps the best quotation of all is from Lord Cameron—and it answers those on the Labour benches who, on an issue of liberty, shout "Rubbish". He said on 1st June 1973:
If Parliament had intended to make registration compulsory under pain of loss of employment in the event of failure to register Parliament could have said so, and it would have been easy to do so, but Parliament has done nothing of the kind".

Mr. Norman Buchan: The hon. Gentleman is reading an awful lot into this. Will he not agree that there is a big difference between their Lordships saying that it did not happen

and arguing thereafter that it follows from that that Parliament did not intend it to happen? I was involved in this matter from the early stages, before it came to Wheatley. It was what everyone expected. The truth is that their Lordships are saying that it did not happen, but the hon. Gentleman must not read into that that it was therefore intended that it should not happen. That is why I said "Rubbish".

Mr. Pardoe: I doubt that that was the real reason why the hon. Gentleman said "Rubbish". He said it because he knows so little about the legal judgments in these cases that he had nothing else to say.

Mr. Emlyn Hooson: Did not the Law Lords say that Parliament did not intend to make this registration compulsory because, in fact it showed no sign of any such intention in the legislation?

Mr. Pardoe: This is my last quotation from the Law Lords—again from Lord Keith:
It is a well established principle of law that a statute should not be held to take away vested rights without compensation unless the intention to do so is expressed in clear and unambiguous terms.
All Members of Parliament know that to be so. If they recognise that a right is there and it is vested, and they fail to take that right away, they know very well, as Lord Keith pointed out, what they are doing. In my view, Parliament did not intend to make registration compulsory or a condition of employment.
Some hon. Members have said that everyone knew what the position was. In fact, everyone did not know, for 75 per cent. of teachers in Scotland were of no mind to register. About 30,000 teachers out of 40,000 had to be coerced in one way or another to register with the General Teaching Council. I remember the debates at the time. I thought it a pity that they were so minded, but they were perfectly entitled so to be. [Interruption.] If the hon. Gentleman disputes the 75 per cent. he is entitled to do so, but I do not suppose he can produce a much better figure. The fact is that a large number of teachers thought that they were entitled to abstain from registration and that it would not be a


question of law for them if they did abstain in that way.
The third principle refers to the regulation of 1967 and what the then Secretary of State thought he was doing at the time. Hon. Members have quoted from the minutes. The right hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) has said that he has not seen the documents recently and he wishes that he had been given notice. I find that an extraordinary argument to use. This is an important Bill enshrining a fundamental issue of liberty. The House does not discuss fundamental issues of principle and liberty only in Committee. It discusses them on the Floor on Second and Third Reading, and on all other occasions that it can find.
It may be late in the night for fundamental principles of liberty to be discussed, but is the right hon. Gentleman saying that he is not aware that a basic argument here concerns the view which he took at the time? I shall not go through the minutes—they have been gone through already in some detail—but I must tell the right hon. Gentleman that, whatever his interpretation and that of his hon. Friends, and whatever the interpretation of the Lord Advocate, who seems to have forged an unholy alliance with the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock, the Professor of Constitutional Law at Edinburgh, having read through the minutes which we have been discussing wrote this in The Times on 8th June:
Documents produced before the Court of Session revealed that for a considerable period before the offending regulation was made the Secretary of State had been advised that he had no power to introduce compulsory registration by regulation.
That is not the view only of the professor of constitutional law. It is also the view of any reasonable man or woman who reads those minutes with an objective view and an open mind.

Mr. Ross: That is just not true.

Mr. Pardoe: The right hon. Gentleman should read them again. He says that he has not read them recently. I repeat that this is the only conclusion that a reasonable person could draw from those minutes.

Mr. Ross: Not at all.

Mr. Pardoe: So Parliament knew what it was doing. The Secretary of State knew what he was doing, and either he knew that the regulation was illegal and he ignored that fact, or he was given different advice at first from what he was given subsequently. Between minute 8 and minute 9 his view changed fundamentally. Apart from what the Secretary of State thought, is it possible that he intended that the teachers who refused to register should be dismissed? It will be interesting to know whether he intended that, because on 24th July 1970 the late Lord Walker said:
… I confess that I should be surprised to find that the Secretary of State had by a statutory instrument compelled the dismissal of certificated teachers for declining to do something which the law did not oblige them to do, namely to register. But I am not satisfied that he ever did any such thing.
I do not know what the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock was doing at the time. I am not sure he knows now what he was doing at the time. I should have thought that the conclusion I am now drawing was the only one possible.
Does the Bill, miserable specimen that it is, mean that a certificated teacher now legally in employment can be dismissed in the future without any question of misconduct entering into his dismissal? If it is the case, on what basis does it apply? Where is it stated in this piece of legislation, or is it by implication only, as it seems to have been by implication only in the previous legislation? Does any Act of Parliament say that education authorities shall employ registered teachers, and does any Act of Parliament say that education authorities shall dismiss certificated teachers legally employed? Are certificated teachers who are now, or were, wrongfully dismissed to be reinstated in employment?
Certain hon. Members have made the point about compensation. What a disgraceful offer to make! Those who have fought this case—reference has been made to 19, and I doubt whether as many as 19 opposed ship money with Hampden—have never stated any desire for compensation. All that they want is freedom to teach, and that is a freedom which the Bill will be taking away from them.
I simply end by quoting Professor Bradley again:
But if this Bill passes through Parliament with its retrospective effect unaltered, a serious inroad will have been made into the rule of law. The message for the citizen will be that it is worthless for him to seek a decision in the courts on the extent of the Government's powers since, if he wins in the courts, the Government will make use of its predominant position in Parliament to remove the victory from him…. The present Bill makes neither for good law nor for good government.
He says that the Bill threatens the principle that government must be conducted according to the law. The Lord Advocate is a Law Officer, and I hope that he is ashamed of his dirty piece of legislation.

11.35 p.m.

Mr. T. H. H. Skeet: I have one or two brief observations only.
It is apparent to me that the Bill makes no provision for the payment of compensation for any people who may have been dismissed, although I have no doubt that my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Advocate will say that ex gratia payments may be made. The Bill should have included an additional clause headed
Provision for compensation". [Interruption.]
The provision that the two earlier Acts shall be deemed always to have included powers
to prescribe in such regulations that only registered teachers shall be employed or continue to be employed as teachers by education authorities"—

Mr. Millan: The hon. Member for Cornwall, North (Mr. Pardoe) is a paid hack.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Miss Harvie Anderson): Order. We cannot continue with the hon. Member who has the Floor being unable to be heard while others make so much noise from a seated position.

Mr. Pardoe: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I have been accused of not declaring my interest. I declared it at the opening of my speech, as will be clearly recorded in HANSARD.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I am sure HANSARD will record what the hon. Gentleman said.

Mr. Skeet: It is apparent from a reading of the first clause that those con-

cerned will be employed only if they are registered and pay their contribution. Therefore, if they do not pay their contribution and are not registered they will lose their employment entirely.
We are passing a Bill to try to substantiate a position which was felt to be the law many years ago, under which people will lose their employment, their freedom to work, their freedom of choice to do what they think is right.
It should be understood that what is said in the House is quite immaterial. It is what is written in the Bill that matters. It is the statute that is interpreted by the independent judiciary.
It may have been assumed many years ago that Parliament made provision for what it said it was going to do. Parliament did not make this provision, and the result has been that the court has decided, perfectly fairly, for Mr. Malloch, that he had the right to sue on a claim, and on one part of that he succeeded. I wish him well in those proceedings.
I am concerned about the implications for the House. Several years ago the case of Rookes v. Barnard went right through the process of the law to the highest court of the land, to the House of Lords. The situation there was redressed by the Trade Disputes Act 1965, which took away and negatived any right that the individual citizen had. The difference between that case and this is that there is no retroactive effect.
Everyone will recall the War Damage Act 1965, a short Act similar to the measure before us, of three clauses. It says:
No person shall be entitled at common law to receive from the Crown compensation in respect of damage … to property caused … by acts lawfully done by, or on the authority, of the Crown".
In that case the Burmah Oil Company, on the instructions of the Government, demolished all its installations on the withdrawal of our forces from Burmah. Many years later, well after the 1940s, it brought a claim that went right through the courts. Eventually the Labour Government introduced a Bill—and a Conservative Government would have done precisely the same—to take away the rights granted to the company by the common law.
What worries me is that, while the effect of that legislation was to bring the law back to what it was thought to be


in the 1940s, and, therefore, to change the whole basis for the proceedings, what we are doing tonight is to bring about the position as the House would want it today to be, as if it had happened in 1965. That is entirely inappropriate. Far too much use is being made of retrospective legislation. I should have thought that the House would be prepared to make a firm stand to make it clear that it will not endorse retroactive legislation in this form if it will impair the rights of individuals. In the case which has been referred to, 20 people were dismissed, and one person was successful enough to take the case right through the stages of the law to a point when he succeeded. It was at that point that I dare say the Law Officers decided that they should take steps to redress the position.

Mr. MacArthur: My hon. Friend and I share the same loathing of retrospective legislation. Does he accept the point which I was trying to make earlier, that the only people who could conceivably have suffered are the 19 teachers who lost their jobs? Further, does he accept that that suffering has been totally removed by the Government's undertaking to pay them full compensation?

Mr. Skeet: My hon. Friend is wrong. If only 19 people have suffered damage, why did not the Government include a clause in the Bill, instead of giving exgratia payments, so that they could see the earnest of the Government's intention? Why should they do one thing by letter, for example, and one thing by enactment? Of course, there are probably many people who had not the courage to defy the law as it then was. Only 20 people came forward to challenge the law but many other people could have done so.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: The crucial point is far wider than the interests of the 20 people who were dismissed. It is in the interests of the community as a whole that the courts should not be overridden with retrospective legislation of this kind. Rights won by one individual against the whole might of the Government should be respected by the law.

Mr. Skeet: I thought I had made the point clear. We in this House are those who prescribe the law as we see it. If we receive bad advice which requires cor-

recting in later years, that is unfortunate for the legislators and it can be unfortunate for individuals. The courts are completely independent as a judiciary, and they interpret the law as they read it in the statute book. The right hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) may have made all sorts of assurances and statements in Committee—I dare say that he is a man of the highest integrity when dealing with these matters—but those assurances and statements are not utilised in a court of law when interpreting a statute.
The statute was clear but it was necessary to introduce this Bill with retrospective effect to carry the law back to what was required in 1965. That is totally and morally wrong, and the Government were extremely unwise in bringing the Bill before the House.

11.43 p.m.

Mr. Donald Stewart: I was not a member of the Committee which discussed the Bill. I am neither a member of the legal nor of the teaching professions. I do not even pretend to know or recall very much of the controversy about the GTC registration. But I know that the principle which we are discussing was fought by an individual through the courts of the land and that legislation is to be introduced to set that decision at nought.
That is terribly dangerous interference with the law. I support no Bill of that kind from this Government or from any other Government, or any other place.

11.44 p.m.

Mr. Michael Clark Hutchison: When this matter first arose, both parties were united in believing that there should be a General Teaching Council on the lines of the Law Society or the Bar Council. I was strongly in favour of it. Every member of the Scottish Grand Committee favoured it, and the Bill went through. What has happened is that there has been an error in the drafting procedure and certain people have made capital out of it. I respect them because I am always for the individual.
I support the Bill and I shall go into the Lobby in favour of it. The Government have said "This is what Parliament wanted and we are rectifying the position.
We recognise that a mistake has been made, and anybody who has been aggrieved"—

Mr. Skeet: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Clark Hutchison: Mr. Clark Hutchison—no, I will not—"or who has suffered damage will have every opportunity to obtain compensation, and he will obtain generous compensation." That is what everybody of reasonable mind wants to happen. That is what I pressed for in Committee, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. MacArthur).
I congratulate the Government on bringing forward the Bill. It is what the teachers want. They have been agitating for it for years. I have never had a letter against it; I have had many in favour of it. Every hon. Member opposite knows that the EIS and all the teaching organisations want the Bill, and they want one organisation to speak for them.

I am not prepared to pay attention to the rubbish uttered by the hon. Member for Cornwall, North (Mr. Pardoe). What does he know about this matter? It was pure humbug. On the question of dictation, let me remind him that it was Gladstone who brought in the guillotine.

11.47 p.m.

Mr. Russell Johnston: I served on the famous Committee to which reference has been made. I propose to vote against the Bill, and I want in two or three sentences to say why.
In my honest recollection, I believe that the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) is correct, as is the hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. MacArthur), in saying that it was the intention of people in the Committee that registration with a General Teaching Council, which I supported then and which I support now, should be compulsory because, as Lord Wheatley and his colleagues rightly concluded, this was the only way in which such a body could, in the first instance, be made workable. We cannot introduce anything of this sort in any other way. If we do, we involve ourselves in endless complications.
However, it has been clearly demonstrated in the court that Parliament's intention was not fulfilled in the legis-

lation. The hon. Member for Renfrew, West (Mr. Buchan) intervened in the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Cornwall, North (Mr. Pardoe). I remember him giving me a long and solemn lecture on the limitations of Ministers and the fact that they did not have discretionary powers. He said that it was not a question of whether they thought that something was right; it was a question of what was in the statute. It seemed that the statute was the great defender of the liberties and rights of the individual. It was not a question of what Parliament might or might not have intended. It was demonstrated clearly that that was not the case.
Therefore, it is wrong for the executive, with all their might and power and supposed capacity not to make mistakes, to do something retrospective and not even to write into the legislation any reference to compensation, damages or anything of that sort for those people who throughout, wrongly in political terms, based their case on an interpretation of the law which was proven in the highest courts in Scotland to be right. For that reasons, I shall vote against the Bill.

Mr. MacArthur: While the provision is not written into the Bill—and I agree that it would be better if it was—the fact is that the Government have made their declaration and have therefore made a demonstration of good faith which I, and, I believe, many hon. Members, accept totally. Compensation is to be paid. Therefore, if they are the only people who could conceivably have suffered by the retrospective nature of the Bill, surely the grounds for objection to the Bill are removed.

Mr. Johnston: All I can say to that is that after all the years since the regulations of 1967 were introduced something more than demonstrations of good faith is required. What is required is something actually in the statute.

11.50 p.m.

Mr. Norman Buchan: I am in a rather peculiar position as being the only one who got this right in Committee in 1965. As hon. Members will remember, if my amendment had been carried the problem would have been solved. I can claim no great fore-vision because of that. I should have


been right by accident because the problem with which I was concerned was that of the uncertificated teacher and we were discussing making sure that those who could not register because they were not certificated would not be able to teach. The whole point of the discussion was that it was accepted throughout the Committee that registration was replacing certification. However, events have turned out rather differently.
I had not intended to take part in this debate. I came into the Chamber to hear the winding-up speeches, but I have heard one or two comments that I ought not to let pass.
The hon. Member for Preston, North (Miss Holt) advanced the proposition that the Bill was worse than the proposal which would deport thousands of people from this country. In the name of God, she should get her priorities right. The Bill may have caused difficulty and a lot of pain to more than one individual—especially to one—but the hon. Lady cannot argue that it is worse than a proposal to deport thousands of people.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: The position with the legislation to which the hon. Member refers is precisely the reverse, because the House of Lords has said that Parliament's intention was something which the hon. Gentleman and many others believed it was not, but the Government have accepted that view. In this case, they are doing the reverse.

Mr. Buchan: The hon. Gentleman should understand that we are not dealing with legal technicalities. The hon. Lady was making a moralistic judgment when she said that this was worse than that proposition; it is nothing of the sort.

Mr. Edward Taylor: My hon. Friend the Member for Preston, North (Miss Holt), who made an important speech, was speaking as a lawyer. She was saying that legally this case was more significant than the recent House of Lords case. She was not discussing any possible hardship.

Mr. Buchan: In the hon. Lady's absence I am willing to accept that gloss, but that sort of moralistic or value judgment ought not to be made.
The hon. Member for Cornwall, North (Mr. Pardoe) said that he declared his interest. I sat within three yards of him, but I did not hear him. [HON. MEMBERS: "He declared it."] I heard him say that he had to declare his interest, which was that he was in favour of the Teaching Council and in favour of teachers. I certainly heard no mention of the relationship he had with that organisation of which I believe he is a paid representative in this House.
This is important, because the sister organisation in Scotland of the hon. Member's organisation did not secure any member on the council in the elections. At that point, if my memory is correct, the heat was put into the issue and people were encouraged to leave or to resist the proposition. The sister organisation was suggesting alternatives so that voting to the council could take place on the basis of organisations. Let us remember that there was a good deal of split unionism then.
The third speech which made me want to take part in the debate was that by the honest Liberal Member, the hon. Member for Inverness (Mr. Russell Johnston). I am particularly unhappy tonight, and this is true of all of us. No one likes retrospective legislation. I remember, and it is no secret, that I campaigned to achieve retrospective legislation for a good cause, involving the hon. Member's constituents who were suffering hardship. I was able to change the law so that no such hardship occurred in future. I believe that he was one of those who pressed me to make such legislation retrospective to cope with the problem.

Mr. Russell Johnston: The hon. Gentleman is correct in saying that I pressed him to introduce retrospective legislation. There was a vote on an amendment introduced by the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan). The difference is important. The hon. Member will remember this because he was a Minister at the time. It was not retrospective legislation in absolute terms. It would have applied only to those farmers who had been served notice and the notice had not been fulfilled. It was not a question of a complete change.

Mr. Buchan: It was pressure, coupled with a vote, to introduce retrospective legislation. Let us have no more rubbish about this. I believe that retrospective legislation is always bad and that it takes a mighty good to overcome it. This is the situation tonight. There are alternatives. One would be to bring in a new Bill establishing a new General Teaching Council with compulsory registration. That is one way. The way the Government have adopted is another. This does not take at all from Mr. Malloch and the fight he has put up. We honour him. He has been proved right.
It still leaves the problem that the GTC is required and wanted, and means have to be found to implement it. There is a need to get a grip on the standard of entry into the profession so that for the first time we get something analogous to the medical profession. That was the aim and purpose and it still remains a requirement.
Therefore, regretfully, because I do not like retrospective legislation and because I did not agree with and could not and still do not understand the motivation which inspired Mr. Malloch, despite my attempts to understand it, other than the technical legalistic one that he was correct in law, I will support the Bill. I just cannot see the other motives which inspired Mr. Malloch. For instance, the initial objection—that it could not be accepted because it allowed certain unregistered teachers and it was brought in to phase out unregistered teachers—seems to be an argument for, not against, it. The continuing argument that it allowed unregistered lecturers in training colleges again seems to be contradictory to the proposition, because the aim of the legislation was to try to achieve a totally registered profession. Therefore, although I can accept and admire the fact that he proved his case, we are still left with the proposition: what do we do?
The method chosen by the Government is one which I am sure they do not like. We see the danger of bringing in retrospective legislation. I believe that this is a milder case than has sometimes happened in other instances. Therefore, reluctantly, and only because of that principle, I will support the Bill. I believe it is what is required by the teachers, and we have had an assurance

about compensation for those who have been affected by the legislation in the past.

12.2 a.m.

Mr. Neil Carmichael: I think that all hon. Members who served on the Committee and are in the House tonight feel strongly about the question of retrospective legislation. So far, both in Committee and in the House, we have spent 10 hours on this point. That is perfectly reasonable, because it is important. But to imply that we were not concerned because the legislation was retrospective is unfair to all hon. Members who were on the Committee and who are in the House tonight.
We had a long and informed speech by the Lord Advocate on the question of retrospective legislation. We should ask those who have made such a point about retrospective legislation whether they think it is never correct to have such legislation.
My hon. Friend the Member for Renfrew, West (Mr. Buchan) said that it was never right, and many of us would lean to that point of view; but that merely means that when it has to be done it has to be examined in great detail. I think we have done that both in Committee and in the House tonight.
A number of hon. Members, particularly the hon. Members for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. MacArthur) and Edinburgh, South (Mr. Clark Hutchison), listened to the whole of the Committee stage of the Bill. They were very perturbed at the beginning, but at the end, because of the explanations given by the Lord Advocate and the Minister, particularly when he pointed out that full consideration would be given to compensation for those who were affected, their doubts about individuals suffering were removed. Surely this is the fundamental point about retrospective legislation.
If it is necessary for the greater good that there must be retrospective legislation and it is clearly established that no individual will suffer because of it, I do not see how these pious speeches—perhaps more wind than anything else—can have the effect that hon. Members are trying to give to them. I do not see that the people involved are in anything like


the position of Hampden and the ship tax.
I do not think that anyone who has taken part in the debate tonight or who was in touch with events in Scotland during the time when the use of uncertificated teachers was becoming a serious problem was in any doubt that compulsory registration was required. Long before he came to the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Renfrew, West was concerned with the problem of uncertificated teachers and the need for registration. He said that the idea was that the teaching profession itself would be able to phase out uncertificated teachers. That was the basis of the legislation and the reason behind it, and that is what we all believed would happen when the legislation was passed.
The hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire referred to the 1,200 teachers who did not register, and he added that the objection was to the composition of the GTC. There was a certain amount of disturbance in parts of the teaching profession about the composition of the council. That matter was cleared up, and the number of teachers refusing to join fell to only 19. I do not mean to belittle them by saying that there were only 19. The fact is that reasons which led to the 19 not joining were different from those which led to the original refusal to join.
Mr. Malloch fought a remarkable battle and he has found a place for himself in Scottish law that will never be taken away from him, but now is the time to consider the wider questions.

Sir Frederick Corfield: The hon. Gentleman referred to uncertificated teachers. I thought we were dealing with certificated teachers. They do not become better teachers by joining this body. Will the hon. Gentleman please tell us what terrible damage will befall us if we do not pass this Bill, in view of his dislike of retrospection?

Mr. Carmichael: I have great respect for the right hon. and learned Gentleman, but he should not intervene in a Scottish debate. I respect his views on other matters, but he should realise that, when I refer to uncertificated and unregistered teachers, those who have followed this matter in Scotland know what I mean. Uncertificated teachers are those who have not received the appropriate train

ing at a teacher training college. That was the old system for the recognition of teaching qualifications. During the last few years there has been a lot of discussion about certificated and registered teachers, so perhaps we are more au fait with the matter than is the right hon. and learned Gentleman.
The purpose of the registration was to allow the teachers themselves, rather than the Secretary of State, to decide who should be entitled to teach in Scottish schools. As the hon. Member for Edinburgh, South said, the idea was to create for teachers in Scotland a body equivalent to the Law Society for lawyers or the General Medical Council for doctors. It was a good objective and most of the teachers in Scotland agreed with the idea behind the legislation, but there was an oversight in its drafting. The Bill is meant to correct that. Those who have been disadvantaged by the regulation will be compensated. Therefore I feel that, for the greater good of the teaching profession and of teachers in Scotland, the Bill should be given its Third Reading.

12.10 a.m.

The Lord Advocate (Mr. Norman Wylie): I would not for one moment suggest that because the Bill has been comprehensively debated in the Scottish Grand Committee and in Standing Committee it should not be debated here. Undoubtedly the Bill introduces an element of retrospection and, as I have made perfectly clear all along, this is a matter which Parliament must consider carefully. I therefore welcome our debate tonight.
I do not think that much is achieved by using excessive language. When speaking of retrospection it is sometimes dangerous to use generalisations because every case stands on its own merits, and this case of retrospection has to be justified in its context. That is probably accepted. It is well known that Parliament frequently overrules the law and frequently has to consider the circumstances in which that is done. This is not the first case of retrospection legislation in recent years. There are many examples of it, and in this case justification has to be made for it.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne), who, to his credit, has constantly raised this issue,


concedes the need for retrospection over a certain field. I understood that to be his position at the end of the proceedings in Committee and I also understood that to be the substance of the new clause which was not called. In this case the issue is not whether there should be retrospection but what is the area over which the retrospection is to apply.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Angus and others have raised the question of the policy or understanding at the time of the 1965 Act. That is a relevant consideration. If it is not, we have wasted many hours over it. It is relevant to know exactly what is the effect of this retrospective legislation. One effect, to put it negatively, is that the Bill does not retrospectively introduce any new or unexpected obligation. On the contrary, it restates the law on the basis of what until recently it has been generally understood to be. That cannot be dismissed as irrelevant. If it is irrelevant, all our discussion about the passing of the 1965 Act and all the legislative provisions that have followed on it are equally irrelevant.
One of the relevant features of this exercise of retrospective powers is that it does not retrospectively introduce any new or unexpected obligation. It does not introduce retrospectively any statutory offence. It does not seek to introduce any common law principles, as did the War Damage Act. It does not seek to deprive any citizen in Scotland of any damages already pronounced by a court of law or already settled. It does not change the character of any past transaction, nor does it make illegal any act which was perfectly legal at the time it was committed.
The hon. Member for Renfrew, West (Mr. Buchan) said that this was a mild example of the exercise of retrospective powers. The retrospection that is being invited here is of a relatively inoffensive character for the reasons I have indicated and also because we are dealing here entirely in the realm of the statutes. What went wrong here was a defect not in the 1965 Act but in the 1962 Act, and this I elaborated at some length in Committee. If the House will bear with me, I will take a little time to go over that ground again.
I know that my hon. Friend the Member for South Angus will dispute this, but it cannot be said that we did not know what we were doing in Parliament when we passed the parent legislation, the 1965 Act. There are many examples of this. I think that the hon. Member for Inverness (Mr. Russell Johnston) will accept this. In the Committee on the Teaching Council (Scotland) Bill, of which my hon. Friend the Member for South Angus was a member, the Minister was asked by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Rankin):
There is one point about which there has been confusion. Is it not the case that all teachers in grant-aided schools must be registered?
Grant-aided schools are in a slightly different position from normal local authority schools but they are still governed by local authority provisions. The answer was:
Yes, that is quite clear.
The Minister went on to say:
An education authority and a grant-aided school stand in the same position here in that teachers in them at present must be certificated, and in the future we expect that they will be registered for permanent employment."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Scottish Standing Committee, 16th February 1965; c. 40–41.]

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: "We expect."

The Lord Advocate: My hon. Friend said "We expect."

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: Exactly.

The Lord Advocate: The necessary regulations had to be passed before this could take place on the ground.
The hon. Member for Renfrew, West sought to put those statutory provisions in that Bill and was told by the Minister, in effect, "We do not need that because we have the necessary powers in the 1962 Act and we shall pass the necessary regulations to implement this policy of registration which proceeded on the recommendations of the Wheatley Committee ". The Wheatley Committee does not make laws. All I am saying at this stage is that Parliament intended this result to be achieved. It was on advice at the time to the administration that this result could be achieved by the exercise of regulation-making powers under the 1962 Act, and it was on the failure of the statutory provisions of the 1962 Act


that the regulations subsequently made were found to be defective.
The 1967 regulations amended the 1956 code by providing that every teacher employed by an education authority should be a registered teacher instead of a certificated teacher, which was what the 1956 code said. The 1967 amendment substituted the word "registered". The 1967 regulations bore to proceed on the authority of Section 1(2) of the 1962 Act, now Section 2 of that Act as subsequently amended. Indeed, on the basis of that understanding the present administration equally proceeded by legislation in 1971 to enable—and, indeed, to require—local authorities to deduct the annual contribution from teachers' salaries, again on the assumption, wrongly founded as we now know, that there were sufficient statutory powers in Section 1(2) of the 1962 Act to justify it.
The Government are not, therefore, interfering with personal rights or with common law principles. The Government are not dabbling with statutory offences in the way that the more offensive use of retrospective powers could be said to do. The Government are seeking to correct a defect in the 1962 Act about which, until quite recently, no one had thought. Indeed, the hon. Member for Cornwall, North (Mr. Pardoe) referred to some of the observations in the House of Lords in the other case, which was not concerned with these statutory provisions; it was on different grounds and arguments.
But observations were made by their Lordships, the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, that the appellant might be able to question the validity of the regulations, and he quickly—and all credit to him—very successfully proceeded to do so.—[Interruption.] Although the appellant was represented initially, he carried his case through to the House of Lords himself. He did so jolly well, and with success. That was where it started. That was where the doubt arose. It was after that that the present action was raised which questioned the vires of the 1967 regulations by questioning whether Section 1(2) of the 1962 Act was adequate to support the exercise of these powers or these provisions.
It was argued during the course of the debate before the Lord in Ordinary that Parliament could not have intended this because it could not reasonably be said that Parliament expected a teacher to be registered before there could be an efficient system of education. On that argument—I mention this because again it was an argument of the hon. Member for Cornwall, North—the Lord Ordinary said:
I reject this argument. Parliament has thought fit by the 1965 Act to constitute the General Teaching Council for Scotland and to give it various functions as regards the qualification for registration of teachers and the discipline of registered teachers. There can be no doubt that although the Act does not fall to be read as one with the Education Acts, its provisions are closely related to the general system of State education in Scotland. Parliament must necessarily have taken the view that the implementation of these provisions would tend to promote the efficiency of that system. In these circumstances it cannot he held that the Secretary of State could not reasonably take the view that a general requirement regarding the employment of registered teachers would tend towards the adequate and efficient provision of education.
Although the Lord Ordinary expressed no doubt as to Parliament's intention in the 1965 Act, he went on to ask—this is the crux—whether Parliament had in fact achieved this result. The Lord Ordinary put it in this way:
The question, therefore, which I have to decide … is whether the 1967 amendment of the 1956 Code was authorised by Section 1(2) of the 1962 Act in so far as the amendment bore to affect certificated teachers in employment when it came into force.
It was on that that the Secretary of State fell down, not because of anything in the regulations themselves, not because of anything in the 1965 Act, but because the provisions of the 1962 Act were insufficiently clear and unambiguous to justify the making of these provisions.
In that situation, when over a period of years thousands of teachers have been registered, money has been deducted by local authorities and handed over to the General Teaching Council, and the General Teaching Council has been exercising a jurisdiction inextricably mixed up with the concept of registration, we now find that in respect of those teachers in employment at the time it may well be argued that they have not been registered at all because the deductions


in respect of the renewal of their registration has now fallen to be questioned.
As I said in Committee, it is quite arguable that the defect in the 1962 Act provisions is such as to raise a question mark over the registration of the whole teaching profession in Scotland, not only those who were in post when the regulations came into force in April 1968. [Interruption.] My hon. Friend says "So what?" Here we have a General Teaching Council which was constituted by Act of Parliament with the statutory duty to represent registered teachers. It has been purporting to do that for a number of years. Its very composition included 25 persons representing registered teachers who are themselves registered teachers. [Interruption.] My hon. Friend says "So what?" If there have never been any registered teachers, I suppose we could scrap everything and start all over again. Of course, there is the problems of the deductions which have been made over a period of years. I understand my hon. Friend to accept the need for retrospective legislation to cover the problem of claims against local authorities in that respect.
In my submission, having regard to the technical nature of what went wrong here—because it is purely a technical defect that is being corrected—the House would be justified in supporting this approach. Accepting, as my hon. Friend now accepts, that there must be some retrospection to cover the position of local authorities, it would only be sensible to cover the position of the General Teaching Council in Scotland as well. unless one wants to destroy the morale and the existence of the General Teaching Council. If that is the policy behind some of the attacks that have been made on the legislation, one can understand it.
Looking at the situation unemotionally and impartially, weighting the disadvantages of using retrospective provisions at all against the disadvantages which flow from their absence, I submit that on a balance of judgment these powers are justified and that it is not a case, as someone said, of the executive bulldozing this type of legislation through the House of Commons. As I said in Committee, I would prefer the message that would go from this House to go out as a consensus of opinion. One cannot expect

unanimity, and I expect that if it came to a vote a number of hon. Members would vote against, but I should like to see this exercise of retrospective powers on a basis of a consensus of opinion between both sides, and I am reasonably confident that we will achieve it.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend will resist the temptation to try to claim that, because my new clause involved an element of retrospection, that in some way means that I accept the generalised retrospective element of the Bill. That does not follow at all. But before my right hon. and learned Friend concludes—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Robert Grant-Ferris): Order. The hon. Gentleman would be out of order in referring to the new clause, which was not selected.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: I apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but my right hon. and learned Friend did just that. I hope, however, that before he concludes lie will deal with the evidence I have put before the House tonight that the Secretary of State at the time himself knew that the sort of regulation he intended to introduce in 1967 was ultra vires.

The Lord Advocate: I entirely accept that my hon. Friend accepts the need for retrospection in a limited field. He has never denied it. It is conceded by him that there ought to be some retrospection in this legislation. All I say is that with that concession it is a very short step not only to cover the position of local authorities, about which he is concerned—and that is a major problem, I agree—but it is only logical to cover the position of the General Teaching Council, unless, of course, one is determined to do what damage one can to that body as an institution.
I had not intended to refer to the minutes or observations which my hon. Friend made about the Secretary of State at the time. I was not there. All I will say is that the minutes of 28th October 1966—paragraph 3(b)—do not in my view support the contention and the construction he sought to impose upon it. My reading of those minutes—one must remember that they are minutes and not contractual documents or conveyancing deeds—is that there was never any question about the need for registration.
The only issue was the narrower one of teachers with reserved rights. As I pointed out in a letter to my hon. Friend—I am sorry that he only got it, I think, today—the reserved rights that were referred to were the rights reserved under the 1965 Act, because that Act gives a certificated teacher the reserved right, the vested right, to registration on application with no other preconditions at all. That is the reserved right. That is the vested right to which the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross), on my construction of this minute, was referring.
The right hon. Member knows that reference was made to an "unholy alliance" between us, and it would be a pretty unholy alliance if he and I were frequently on the same side, but I have known him a good many years, and it is a serious suggestion, if it be suggested, that a Privy Councillor and a member of the Cabinet goes ahead in the teeth of legal advice to do what he knows is illegal in the hope that nobody will find out. If that is the suggestion, it is a very serious suggestion and not one which can be borne out by anything in those minutes.

Mr. Milan: I have now obtained a full copy of the memorandum of 10th October 1966, an extract from which is recorded in the minutes. It simply confirms what I said earlier, that the accusation made repeatedly tonight by the hon. Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne) is utterly untrue—I hope the hon. Member will have the grace to withdraw it—that the memorandum states that the then Secretary of State was advised, or accepted advice, that to introduce the regulation in the form he did in 1967 would be outwith his powers and illegal. This is just not true. I have the memorandum here in my hand.

The Lord Advocate: In conclusion, it seems to me that in all these cases when we are examining retrospective legislation there is a balanced judgment which has to be reached. One can never say that it is never justifiable; no one can say

that it should be regularly or easily justified or is lightly to be considered. In this case, when we are dealing entirely in the realms of the future of the legislation, in the circumstances of this case, having regard to the background and the purpose of the legislation, I am suggesting that it is justifiable, and I recommend these provisions to the House.

Mr. Robert Cooke: I wonder whether my right hon. and learned Friend—[interruption.] I have not just come in. I have been waiting for about an hour and a half for this wretched thing to come to a conclusion. I tried to ask a perfectly straightforward question before my right hon. and learned Friend got up, but he seemed not to see me, so I want to ask it now.
This Bill has a prospectus, which will not be enacted and put on the statute book but is the Government's prospectus. It is the explanatory memorandum which says that
The Bill creates no burden on Exchequer funds".
We have heard a lot about compensation. For the record, I want to know where the compensation is to come from.

Miss Holt: It is not provided for in the Bill.

Mr. Cooke: But how much will it be'? If my vote is to go for this measure—and the Government may need my vote to get it through—I want to know exactly when the money is to be paid out, by whom, how much, and how. I imagine that my right hon. and learned Friend will answer the question.

Mr. Monro: I will answer the point. The Bill does not cover the compensation. That is covered by the announcement I made on my own authority and that of the Secretary of State in Standing Committee. The amount is unlikely to exceed £50,000. It may be considerably less.

Question put, That the Bill be now read the Third time:—

The House divided: Ayes 59, Noes 10.

Division No. 191.]
AYES
[12.34 a.m.


Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)
Carmichael, Neil
Eyre, Reginald


Atkins, Humphrey
Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)
Fortescue, Tim


Bitten, John
Clegg, Walter
Fox, Marcus


Braine, Sir Bernard
Cooke, Robert
Gilmour, Sir John (Fife, E.)


Buchan, Norman
Dalyell, Tam
Golding, John




Gower, Raymond
Money, Ernie
Shersby, Michael


Hamilton, James (Bothwell)
Monro, Hector
Soref, Harold


Haselhurst, Alan
Morgan-Giles, Rear-Adm.
Speed, Keith


Hayhoe, Barney
Murton, Oscar
Spence, John


Hill, John E. B. (Norfolk, S.)
Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael
Stanbrook, Ivor


Hornsby-Smith, Rt. Hn. Dame Patricia
Nott, John
Tugendhat, Christopher


Huckfield, Leslie
Osborn, John
van Straubenzee, W. R.


Hutchison, Michael Clark
Page, Rt. Hn. Graham (Crosby)
Waddington, David


James, David
Price, David (Eastleigh)
Ward, Dame Irene


Jones, Arthur (Northants, S.)
Price, William (Rugby)
Weatherill, Bernard


Jopling, Michael
Pym, Rt. Hn. Francis
Worsley, Marcus


Knight, Mrs. Jill
Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David
Wylie, Rt. Hn. N. R.


Longden, Sir Gilbert
Ross, Rt. Hn. William (Kilmarnock)



MacArthur, Ian
Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Machin, George
Shaw, Michael (Sc'b'h & Whitby)
Mr. Hamish Gray and


Millan, Bruce
Shelton, William (Clapham)
Mr. John Stradling Thomas.




NOES


Cooke, Robert
Kinsey, J. R.
Tope, Graham


Coombs, Derek
Mudd, David
Winterton, Nicholas


Grimond, Rt. Hn. J.
Pardoe. John



Holt, Miss Mary
Skeet, T. H. H.
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Hooson, Emlyn
Stewart, Donald (Western Isles)
Mr. J. Bruce-Gardyne and


Johnston, Russell (Inverness)

Mr. David Steel.

Question accordingly agreed to.

Bill read the Third time and passed.

ADJOURNMENT

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. John Stradling Thomas.]

HOSPITAL BUILDING PROGRAMME (MIDLANDS)

12.42 a.m.

Mr. Wiliam Price: I am grateful for the opportunity of this Adjournment debate to raise a matter of vital importance to every family in Britain. I believe that we shall face an unprecedented crisis in our hospitals within 10 years. My specific anxiety concerns the St. Cross Hospital, Rugby, a project which has already been debated three times in this House. I am concerned also with the general capital building programme within the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board area. It is clear that the £4 million development at St. Cross is as far away as ever it has been. We waited many years for it. We are no nearer to our objective than when we set out. What is worse is that the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board, as is its habit, has smacked the dab hand of secrecy across the whole miserable affair.
On Midlands Television recently the Secretary of State was asked about fears that I had been expressing about the hospital cuts and he replied:

He may have in mind some hopes, or even expectations, that have been created without any real basis.
The Under-Secretary of State knows perfectly well where my hopes came from. I have a great regard for him and I have no wish to be spiteful. He has always been most helpful to me. I only hope that his memory is better than that of the Secretary of State.
I will remind the hon. Gentleman where those hopes of mine, which the Secretary of State says were created without any real basis, came from. He was at the meeting in Rugby in May 1971 when officials of the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board gave the most specific pledge that we should get 160 new beds and ancillary services at St. Cross Hospital by 1979 at the latest. I invite him to confirm whether that promise holds good. My information is that it is not worth the paper on which it was printed. We have no hope of getting those beds. We have been conned. The board has told us nothing officially. We live with no real hope.
We would not even know what the position was unless, after receiving strange and conflicting answers in the House, I had asked to see the Minister. That meeting took place on 21st May. At least I can say that he spelt out the position to me very fairly and fully and, I believe, very honestly. I was told by him and his officials that for a variety of reasons the hospital building programme envisaged for the late 1970s would not go ahead as planned. The main reason appears to me to be a levelling-off of


expenditure after the peak of the mid-1970s.
There was to be no doubt about it. I was assured that the Rugby project had not been pushed back down the queue, as it had been so often in the past, that what had happened was that the whole queue had gone back down the street and that what was true in the Birmingham region, what was true in the Coventry hospital management area, was equally true for the rest of the country.
In the same television interview, however, the Secretary of State denied that hospital building in the West Midlands had been put back. He said:
On the contrary, Birmingham, like the rest of the country, has benefited from an increase in real spending power.
To put it as generously as possible, there appears to be some conflict within the Department. Either the entire building programme, including St. Cross, will go ahead as planned or it will not. I am in no doubt.
I think that the Under-Secretary is right, and he and I know the reasons. Recent reports have spelt them out only too clearly. The health service has been starved of funds for the past 25 years. We now spend less on it than does practically any other developed country. That is why we have acute overcrowding in the Birmingham region, 60,000 people on the waiting list for admission to our hospitals and many decrepit hospitals. That is why more and more people who can afford it are opting out and purchasing their own protection.
The prospect before us is even less appealing. In Rugby, as in many other places, we have waited year after year for our hospital developments. If we get them in the next decade and a half we shall be lucky, and no one is even prepared to give us that guarantee. Indeed, from the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board there is no guarantee: there is not even information. If it had not been for the campaign run by the Birmingham Post and my own Questions in the House, with occasional help from my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Leslie Huckfield), no one would know anything.
The board is a very strange animal. Its behaviour was summed up in an editorial

in the Birmingham Post on 22nd June, when it said:
The manner in which the Birmingham Regional Board conducts its affairs is rapidly becoming a public outrage.
It returned to the attack five days later with this comment:
In a letter on this page today a spokesman for the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board takes the Post to task for criticising the board for the lack of information it gives to the public. Not to divulge information is clearly the policy of the Board and, therefore, of course, of its officers, for today's letter gives absolutely no information at all and merely repeats the wearisome excuses of the Board as to why it has nothing to say.
That is a fair assessment. I am not surprised that the Birmingham Post is becoming agitated. So am I.
The board had an urgent meeting about capital expenditure with Ministry officials and promised a full statement afterwards. We had one. It consisted of four sentences. There was a refusal to elaborate. Those sentences said nothing. But that was a major step forward. Four sentences from the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board is a major policy statement.
Meanwhile the row in Birmingham continues. I quote from one newspaper's recent headlines:
Doctors deplore delay in Selly Oak Hospital improvements.
Another headline asks:
Why this secrecy?—consultants ask." The next headline says:
Urgent hospital plan 'put back by Government spending limits.'
There are then three headlines which I should mention. The first says:
MP reveals that hospital building estimates will not be increased.
The second says:
Midland MP tables his first 20 questions on hospitals.
The third says:
MP plans 100 questions to beat secrecy over hospitals.

Mr. Leslie Huckfield: Name him.

Mr. Price: He is a modest and gentle soul. More Questions are coming. There are another 20 on the way. They will be tabled on Wednesday.
I find the board's apparent belief curious. It seems to think that, if it says nothing, that will be the end of the


matter. It seems to believe that no one will do his homework and that we shall act like good boys in the face of a stern headmaster. It should know by now that it has no hope at all.
It was the Under-Secretary of State who served me with the necessary information in a letter dated 29th June. He said:
In the sense that the whole of the tentative programme for later years has been reconsidered by the Board, it is fair to say that a number of major schemes have moved from the position originally envisaged for them.
That is a gentle way of saying that many major hospital schemes in the region, and inevitably throughout the rest of the country, have been dealt the most grievous blow. No other interpretation can be put on the Minister's remarks. That leaves the hospital of St. Cross of Rugby where I came in eight years ago, despite one assurance after another in the presence of Ministers and otherwise. We have about as much chance of getting a new hospital as I have of being the next leader of the Conservative Party.

Mr. Huckfield: I should not say that. That is a possibility.

Mr. Price: We are not, as the Minister knows perfectly well, unreasonable people. It was not easy, after the meeting in 1971, for me to go to my constituents. The hon. Gentleman knows what a hot issue this is for me. It makes the Common Market pale away into insignificance. I had to go and tell them "I am awfully sorry, but it will be another eight years." But I did it. He knows that I did it. Now I shall have to go back to them and tell them "Brothers, it was to be eight years but the authorities did not really mean that at all. It may be 10 or 12 years, but it is much more likely to be 15 years." They will not be at all happy about that.
Meanwhile the board, with its monolithic organisation which operates as a law unto itself, plods on apparently oblivious to criticism. It seems determined to keep bad news to itself. It does not even give out good news. For reasons which I do not understand, officials of the board would not even tell me the time of day. I have to go to the Minister for my information. Every so often the board makes a statement saying, "Price has not come to us for any information

for six months." I have not been to it for information for six years. I found a long time ago that that was not a productive exercise. I ask the hon. Gentleman for information. I do so by Questions and Adjournment debates. It was at a private meeting that he was kind enough to tell me what I was up against.
All I can hope for tonight is confirmation of my worst fears, which I repeat, are simple enough: that because of a cutback in the late 1970s, so far largely unnoticed in the House or outside, there has been, or will be, a savage reappraisal of all major hospital developments throughout the country. That is a tragedy for the tens of millions of people who depend on the health service. It is a situation of which everyone in this House should be thoroughly ashamed. It is one which makes me despair. I see the crises of the past in the health service, and I see the disasters of the future.

12.56 a.m.

Mr. Leslie Huckfield: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mr. William Price) on once more raising with vivid determination the question of the activities of the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board. My constituents and the Nuneaton Borough Council had exactly the same assurances from the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board about the new district general hospital in Nuneaton. The trouble was that, with the board's usual bungling incompetence, it even got the population of Bedworth and Atherstone wrong while it was giving those assurances.
When I was a member of the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board, even when it had money it said either that it had insufficient projects to occupy the allocation of it or that the architects' department was overcrowded. If ever a hospital board needed investigation by the Department, this is it. When it has money, it does not know what to do with it. When it has worthy projects, it cannot find the money. I do not know whether in the past it has been a question of its concentrating too much on major projects. When, as a member of the board, I proposed minor improvements, I was told that most of the board's capital allocation was being consumed by fairly major projects. Now


the board seems far too consumed by minor projects so that it cannot undertake deserving major projects like the St. Cross Hospital at Rugby and the new district general hospital at Nuneaton. The activities of the board need to be examined.
When public expenditure cuts were made by the Department two or three months ago, we were told that hospital building projects would not be affected. If the Minister can give a stringent denial that the hospital cuts to which my hon. Friend referred are not connected with those cuts, it will be some reassurance. If he says that the regional hospital board failed to make sufficient allowance for inflation, that is a bad reflection on the regional hospital board. If these cuts are not part of the public expenditure cuts, I want the hon. Gentleman, if he can, to say so. If it is the board's fault because it has failed to allow for inflation, it is an even more serious condemnation of the board.
The effect on my constituents has been exactly the same as that on my hon. Friend's constituents. Imagine the effect of all the reassurances which have been given time and again by the very efficient public relations department of the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board. It knows how to do public relations because the board's PR man used to be assistant editor of the Birmingham Post. It is the only newspaper which seems to have cottoned on to him. It is one of the few newspapers which he has not managed to nobble.
Constituents have said to me time and again "If the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board intends to build a new hospital in Nuneaton, why is it spending so much money on improving the present hospital?" If it is serious about bringing the bulldozers on the site, why should it spend so much time and money on patching up the existing hospital?
I can assure my hon. Friend that the board acts in a very secret way. Once when we had a board meeting there were people outside trying to find out where the board met. The vice-chairman of the board called the police and they sat at the hack of the room for the rest of the board meeting, no doubt in case some of the information got outside.
I know that the Minister may not be able to give me any specific assurances

tonight. If he cannot do so, I sincerely ask him to write to me. We had an assurance and many other parts of the Midlands have had assurances. Although I have some regard for the hon. Gentleman, I shall not believe anything until I see the bulldozers on the site.

1.0 a.m.

Mr. John Golding: What my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mr. William Price) has said applies in general terms to North Staffordshire too. I ask the Minister to tell us the plans for hospital development in North Staffordshire, where the situation is far from satisfactory, and to give an assurance that no proposals that have been made so far will be held up in any way.

1.1 a.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. Michael Alison): My natural benevolence would lead me to wish to refer to the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Leslie Huckfield) and the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. William Price) as the heavenly twins of the West Midlands. But, alas, the style of their speeches tonight and the presence of the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Golding) makes it obvious that they are the three furies.
I shall deal with only one fury, the hon. Member for Rugby, whose Adjournment debate it is, but I shall certainly take note of what has been said by the hon. Member for Nuneaton and the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme. The hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme has asked me so many questions on this subject that I can hardly give him more information, but I will try.
The hon. Member for Rugby started with the national picture and I shall start with that and end by dealing with Rugby, for we have to consider the position of the Birmingham board in the national context.
It goes without saying that many of our hospitals are not up to modern standards and patients receive devoted care behind old walls, as the House knows well. The inheritance of our generation has been a hospital service that has not renewed its stock of building for many years. We started building


new hospitals in this country only as recently as 1962. This is a situation that we all wish to see rectified and there has been a considerable increase in hospital investment in the National Health Service over the past 10 years.
When the Hospital Plan was presented to Parliament in 1962, capital expenditure on hospitals in England was £33 million, the equivalent of about £60 million at current prices. At the time of the revision of the plan in 1966 the level had risen to £75 million, about £120 million at current prices. We estimate that in the current financial year, 197374, hospital capital expenditure will be £227 million, an increase more than threefold in real terms since 1962. Under the present Government alone expenditure on hospitals has increased by about one-third in real terms.
The capital allocations made to the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board for its main capital programme reflect the rapid growth in hospital investment over the past few years. The board's capital allocations rose from £9·3 million in the first year in which the Government came to power to £17 million in 1972–73, an increase of about one-third in real terms.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State intends to maintain a high level of hospital capital building. It is expected that expenditure on hospitals in England will be some £850 million in the five years from 1972–73 compared with about £650 million in the previous five years, again at comparable price levels. After allowing for a change in the definition of "capital", with which I shall deal later, the increase in real terms in the current quinquennium is about 25 per cent.
I should like to say a little about the distribution of hospital capital among the 14 regional hospital boards. To ensure that each board is treated fairly, ideally we need a fully costed programme for all regions based on objective assessments both of need and of the quality and quantity of existing services and an assessment which takes account of the practical scope that there may be for modernisation and adaptation of all existing buildings at reasonable cost. But at present we have neither a comprehensive assessment of need nor a thorough

going audit, as it were, of the existing stock. We must therefore do our best from year to year using the measures available to us.
In the most recent capital distribution, that of the autumn of last year, we based our allocations largely on forecasts of future population weighted by age and sex. We have taken account of shortages of geriatric and acute beds in aggregate and the extent of teaching provision in each region. At present, allocations to regions are made on as objective a set of criteria as we can devise. We realise that our criteria are far from perfect and we are continually trying to improve them.
It is precisely because we have tried to improve the criteria for splitting up the capital between the 14 regions that every look at the 10-year plan from year to year as it rolls forward must lead to situations in which some of the longer-term forecasts change, because every time we succeed in getting better criteria for assessing the real needs of a region we may have to make, towards the end of a 10-year period, a switch from one region to another because we understand more about the relative needs in terms of the ages, the special needs of the elderly, the mentally handicapped, and so on. They vary between regions, and as we get to know the realities of a region it stands to reason that we should be prepared to make some switches.
I turn to the particular problems of the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board. The board did not benefit, indeed it lost out, from the modified distribution of capital which we introduced on revised criteria in 1972. I emphasise that I believe that, on the new distribution method, an improvement has been made on the lines we tried to organise. At the same time it has had to face the ending of the "once off" programme for the improvements to the accommodation of the elderly which my right hon. Friend introduced as a once-for-all operation when he first came to office.
All these factors have created special difficulties for the Birmingham board and it will not receive as much capital over the next few years as expected, and as we expected it would under the criteria we were looking at earlier. It has therefore had to review its programme and defer


some capital schemes. This is where we we come to the decision of St. Cross Hospital, Rugby. Phase one of the redevelopment of this district general hospital has already been completed. In April 1970 the board submitted proposals to my Department for the subsequent development of St. Cross whereby it would replace the existing St. Cross, St. Luke's and St. Mary's Harborough Magna hospitals.
My Department approved these proposals since, taken together with a new district general hospital at Walsgrave, they seemed appropriate for the area as a whole. Aspects of this proposal were unpopular in Rugby, as the hon. Gentleman knows, where some feared that there would be a diminution in the status of St. Cross Hospital to that of a cottage hospital, as someone said. To try to clarify matters, a series of meetings was held between board members, officers and local interests, when the proposals were explained in detail. At that time the board gave an assurance that planning of the development would be completed by 1974–75. I understand that this target at least is expected to be met.
At a meeting I attended the board expressed the intention, and I readily confirm it, that 160 beds of the new development would become available within 10 years, by 1981. The board expressed its intention against the background of expectations of capital allocations which, for the reasons I have outlined, have not been made. The revised criteria mean that it will not be getting as much towards the end of the 10 year period as it expected. The board has been forced to reconsider its programme and is now of the view that it will be unable to fulfil its expressed intention.
I fully realise how disappointing this is to the people of Rugby. In one sense it shows how dangerous it is to try to be too specific and forthcoming about firm starting dates a long time in advance of the work actually being started on the ground. When the intention was expressed the board felt confident that it could be met. Factors which are largely beyond its control have forced it to reconsider the position. It can hardly be expected to sacrifice schemes which in its view are even more necessary than the second phase of St. Cross. At the same time, neither the board nor I like

to disappoint expectations. With reluctance, the board at present feels that it must go back on its expressed intention, as it has had to do in other cases. While I am full of sympathy for those in Rugby who will be disappointed by the decision, taking an overall regional view I believe that the board is right to do so.
The hon. Gentleman may say that I was associated with the expressed intention and therefore the central Department should provide funds specifically to enable it to be fulfilled. Again, I regret that, taking the wider national view, I cannot agree to this. Indeed, the slippage of St. Cross is due to the attempt, through national criteria, to give a fairer distribution throughout the country as a whole, taking account of and giving priority to other areas where there is even greater deprivation.
The position is that the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board cannot say when the second phase of St. Cross will be completed. The new West Midlands Regional Health Authority will be taking responsibility for Rugby on 1st April, 1974 and will have to make its judgment as to the future programme. It will then consider the degree of priority that should be attached to St. Cross. While I realise that this is of small comfort to the local population, this is how matters stand at present.
The picture is not altogether one of sombre gloom. St. Cross Hospital has been firmly designated for development as a district general hospital. These are not paper plans or projections. Phase one of the St. Cross Hospital has been completed. Other developments are also proceeding. In this year alone we intend to start capital developments costing £225,000. This includes the provision of a mental health day centre, the upgrading of engineering services, dispensary and drug store, additional boilers, and wall sluices. These are a foretaste that we do intend not to run down St. Cross but to develop it. It is one question in an agonising series of priorities extending throughout not only the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board but other parts of the country, particularly the South West, where there is an appalling backlog of geriatric provision and other facilities because they have been starved of capital.
It is a sad fact that, in our new criteria for allocating capital, we are having to


put Birmingham at a relative disadvantage compared with other regions, but I confirm—

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock on Monday evening,

and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at twelve minutes past One o'clock.